The purpose of the study was to obtain consensus concerning the defining characteristics of integrated STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) curriculum. This study utilized a three round modified Delphi study to solicit recommendations from experts of STEM education in order to: 1) create a set of categorical and defining curricular components needed to develop and implement appropriate integrated STEM curriculum; 2) identify the characteristics that set integrated STEM education curriculum apart from single-discipline curricula; 3) discuss the components necessary to gauge whether an initiative, project, or curriculum should be referred to as integrated STEM education; and 4) examine whether significant differences exist from the defining characteristics based on the disciplinary grounding of panelists in science, mathematics, or technology and engineering. Results indicate that it is essential that STEM education be problemor project-based, although other considerations are essential in providing students with the most authentic learning experiences. The panel agreed that the majority of STEM curricula are not integrated, but discipline-specific curricula and that many STEM programs have a narrow educational focus that includes a collection of activities and specific products that may not be developed using sound pedagogical practices. The results from the study add to the literature on the definitive attributes of STEM education. Table of


The assassination of Nikolay Bobrikov, the Governor-General of Finland, on 16 June 1904 was a turning point in Finnish history. It was reported in hundreds, if not thousands, of newspapers worldwide. This article follows the spread of that news, particularly its spread over the first week after the assassination. The study draws on the digital newspaper repositories in Australia, Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Mexico, Sweden, the Netherlands and the United States. It also draws on the microfilm and physical collections of Russian newspapers at the National Library of Finland. The article shows how the murder activated the telegram network and initiated a series of news waves. The routes the Bobrikov news travelled, their tempo and the evolution of related stories tell a story of a networked but biased global news scene. In that scene, technological, commercial and cultural factors simultaneously facilitated and controlled what stories reached which papers and how.


Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) contribute heavily to economic growth, social structure and employment as well as regional and local development. Consequently, they have become a significant sector of the economy. The lack of e-commerce (EC) research on SMEs in developing countries is challenging because the findings of previous EC studies on SMEs of developed countries cannot be freely generalized to the context of SMEs of developing countries. To help SMEs, in particular those in developing countries, with EC adoption, this research investigates the factors within the Technological Organizational Environmental (TOE) framework that affect the decision to adopt EC as well as the adoption and non-adoption of different EC tools. Furthermore the current research attempted to investigate the level of EC adoption in SMEs. A questionnaire-based survey using a quantitative approach is conducted. Two hundred thirty five manufacturing SMEs were selected as respondents in this work. The findings showed that seven out of ten factors have significant positive relationships with EC adoption, which were buyer/supplier pressure, support from technology vendors, perceived compatibility, CEO innovativeness, perceived relative advantage, competition and information intensity. Moreover, results showed that 57.02 percent of SMEs adopted EC.


Abstract. The eco-hydrological model SWAT (Soil and Water Assessment Tool) is a useful tool to simulate the effects of catchment processes and water management practices on the water cycle. For each catchment some model parameters (e.g. ground water delay time, ground water level) remain constant and therefore are used as constant values; other parameters such as soil types or land use are spatially variable and thus have to be spatially discretized. SWAT setup interfaces process input data to fit the data format requirements and to discretize the spatial characteristics of the catchment area. The primarily used configuration is the sub-watershed discretization scheme. This spatial setup method, however, results in a loss of spatial information which can be problematic for SWAT applications that require a spatially detailed description of the catchment area. At present no SWAT interface is available which provides the management of input and output data based on grid cells. To fill this gap, the authors developed a grid-based model interface. To perform hydrological studies, the SWAT user first calibrates the model to fit to the environmental and hydrological conditions of the catchment. Compared to the sub-watershed approach, the grid-based setup significantly increases model computation time and hence aggravates calibration according to established calibration guidelines. This paper describes how a conventional set of sub-watershed SWAT parameters can be used to calibrate the corresponding grid-based model. The procedure was evaluated in a sub-catchment of the River Elbe (Northern Germany). The simulation of daily discharge resulted in Nash-Sutcliffe efficiencies ranging from 0.76 to 0.78 and from 0.61 to 0.65 for the calibration and validation period respectively; thus model performance is satisfactory. The sub-watershed and grid configuration simulate comparable discharges at the catchment outlet (R2 = 0.99). Nevertheless, the major advantage of the grid-based set-up is an enhanced spatial description of landscape units inducing a more realistic spatial distribution of model output parameters.


In Indonesia, aggressive behaviour in college students phenomenon is often occur and has been sighted by many party. College students as human resourcess they would be expected to become an agen of change and bring enlightment to society for nowdays and the future. Aggresion is behaviour that could damage for themselves and others. Thus, an effort to reduce and control aggressive behavior in college student is absolutely needed. Here is the role of religion is expected to reduce and block aggressive bahavior in college students. Hence, the more religious or hinger religious commitment would be expected to reduce and block aggressive behavior in college student. This research is quantitative correlational research and aimed to find out the relation between religiosity ang aggressivity in college student. Independent variable is religiosity and dependent variable is aggressivity. Population in this research is the first year undergraduate college student of Muhammadiyah University of Malang in period 2007. Sampling technique in this research is
proportional purposive sampling, subjects were 343 college students. Data were collected using likert scale. There are 2 scales, religiosity and aggressivity scales. Data analyses were used product moment correlation method from Karl Pearson. Result of the research shows that there is very significant negative correlation between religiosity and aggressivity in college student which correlation coefficient (r) = (-0.420) and error probability (p) = 0,000. The more religious college student the less aggressive he/she is, the less religious college student the more aggressive he/she is. Religiosity has portion on aggression 17.6% and 82.4% come from another variable.


Commonly, when it is desirable to replace an essential gene with an allelic series of mutated genes, or genes with altered expression patterns, the complementing constructs are introduced into heterozygous plants, followed by the selection of homozygous null segregants. To overcome this laborious and time-consuming step, the newly developed two-component system utilizes a site-specific recombinase to excise a wild-type copy of the gene of interest from transformed tissues. In the first component (the first vector), a wild-type version of the gene is placed between target sequences recognized by FLP recombinase from the yeast 2 μm plasmid. This construct is transformed into a plant heterozygous for a null mutation at the endogenous locus, and progeny plants carrying the excisable complementing gene and segregating homozygous knockout at the endogenous locus are selected. The second component (the second vector) carries the experimental gene along with the FLP gene. When this construct is introduced, FLP recombinase excises the complementing gene, leaving the experimental gene as the only functional copy. The FLP gene is driven by an egg apparatus specific enhancer (EASE) to ensure excision of the complementing cDNA in the egg cell and zygote following floral-dip transformation. The utility of this system is being tested using various experimental derivatives of the essential sucrose-proton symporter, AtSUC2, which is required for photoassimilate transport.


Folded layers in rocks can be stretched again, potentially unfolding the folds back to straight layers. Little is known, however, about how to recognize partly or even entirely unfolded layers. When folded layers can unfold, what determines their mechanical behavior, and how can we recognize them in the field? In order to address these questions, we present a series of numerical simulations of the stretching of previously folded single layers and multilayers in simple shear. Layers do not completely unfold when they undergo softening before or during the stretching process, or when adjacent competent layers prevent them from unfolding. Intrafolial folds and cusp-like folds adjacent to straight layers as well as variations in fold amplitudes and limb lengths of irregular folds are indicative of stretching of a fold train.


Recent findings show that people with dyslexia have an impairment in serial-order memory. Based on these findings, the present study aimed to test the hypothesis that people with dyslexia have difficulties dealing with proactive interference (PI) in recognition memory. A group of 25 adults with dyslexia and a group of matched controls were subjected to a 2-back recognition task, which required participants to indicate whether an item (mis)matched the item that had been presented 2 trials before. PI was elicited using lure trials in which the item matched the item in the 3-back position instead of the targeted 2-back position. Our results demonstrate that the introduction of lure trials affected 2-back recognition performance more severely in the dyslexic group than in the control group, suggesting greater difficulty in resisting PI in dyslexia.


The accuracy of atomistic-to-continuum hybrid methods can be guaranteed only for deformations where the lattice configuration is stable for both the atomistic energy and the hybrid energy. For this reason, a sharp stability analysis of atomistic-to-continuum coupling methods is essential for evaluating their capabilities for predicting the formation of lattice defects. We formulate a simple one-dimensional model problem and give a detailed analysis of the linear stability of the force-based quasicontinuum (QCF) method at homogeneous deformations. The focus of the analysis is the question of whether the QCF method is able to predict a critical load at which fracture occurs. Numerical experiments show that the spectrum of a linearized QCF operator is identical to the spectrum of a linearized energy-based quasi-nonlocal quasicontinuum (QNL) operator, which we know from our previous analyses to be positive below the critical load. However, the QCF operator is nonnormal, and it turns out that it is not generally positive definite, even when all of its eigenvalues are positive. Using a combination of rigorous analysis and numerical experiments, we investigate in detail for which choices of "function spaces" the QCF operator is stable, uniformly in the size of the atomistic system.


Abstract. Good practices in heritage conservation are based on accurate information about conditions, materials, and transformation of built heritage sites. Therefore, heritage site documentation and its analysis are essential parts for their conservation. In addition, the devastating effects of recent catastrophic events in different geographical areas have highly affected cultural heritage places. Such areas include and are not limited to South Europe, South East Asia, and Central America. Within this framework, appropriate acquisition of information can effectively provide tools for the decision-making process and management. Heritage documentation is growing in innovation, providing dynamic opportunities for effectively responding to the alarming rate of destruction by natural events, conflicts, and negligence. In line with these considerations, a multidisciplinary team – including students and faculty members from Carleton University and Yangon Technological University, as well as staff from the Department of Archaeology, National Museum and Library (DoA) and professionals from the CyArk foundation – developed a coordinated strategy to document four temples in the site of Bagan (Myanmar). On-field work included capacity-building activities to train local emerging professionals in the heritage field (graduate and undergraduate students from the Yangon Technological University) and to increase the technical knowledge of the local DoA staff in the digital documentation field. Due to the short time of the on-field activity and the need to record several monuments, a variety of documentation techniques, including image and non-image based ones, were used. Afterwards, the information acquired during the fieldwork was processed to develop a solid base for the conservation and monitoring of the four documented temples. The relevance of developing this kind of documentation in Bagan is related to the vulnerability of the site, often affected by natural seismic events and flooding, as well as the lack of maintenance. Bagan provided an excellent case study to test the effectiveness of the proposed approach, to prevent and manage the damages of catastrophic events, and to support retrofitting actions. In order to test the flexibility of adopted methodology and workflow, temples with different features – in terms of architectural design, shape, and geometry – were selected. The goals of these documentation activities range from testing digital documentation workflows for the metric and visual recording of the site (reviewing strengths and limitations of particular recording techniques), to the definition of effective conditions assessment strategies.


Abstract : A great deal of research has been conducted on the effects of vibration on visual acuity. The human contrast sensitivity function (CSF) has also been studied extensively as a predictor of visual performance under real- world conditions. However, no previous studies have combined the two lines of research and examined the effect of vibration on the CSF. Prior research Indicates that Increasing rates of vibration correspond to a decrease In traditional measures of visual acuity. However, other studies Indicate that motion enhances target detection. The present study examined the effects of vibration upon the CSF and found that vibration lowers the threshold of detection for low spatial frequencies but raises the threshold for high spatial frequencies. A loss of contrast at high spatial frequencies due to retinal smear may be the cause of this increase in high spatial frequency thresholds under vibration. Physiological mechanisms of motion detection, direction selectivity, and visual pathways are also discussed. This study may have important Implications for aerospace medicine and occupations which demand viewing a target or Instrument panel under conditions of vibration.


This paper presents a general and comparative review of the advances of grid technologies in medical sciences since 2000, with a special emphasis on Europe and Japan. The EU has over the years funded several big projects in the Grid and now the cloud area, covering besides the high energy physics domain also bioinformatics and medical applications as in image analysis. Bioinformatics and pharmaceutical design have been the major targets of grid applications in Japan. Grids and clouds share many of the same goals and techniques, although clouds are more commercially oriented and privately provided services and grids are rather publicly initiated resource sharing platforms between institutions without strong economic objectives. In the future, merging these two may potentially solve inter-operation problems of grids, which have been limiting the propagation of biomedical grids.


The UK government set up a BIM Task Group in 2011 to provide guidance and support to the industry. This paper reports on BIM Capability audits that were undertaken on two contractor-based organisations to assess their level of readiness to implement BIM level 2 and to highlight training and upskilling needs. The audits were undertaken using a detailed set of 80 questions covering technology, workflows, processes and business strategies. Follow up interviews were undertaken to clarify any ambiguities in the responses received. A vertical cross section of each organisation was audited in order to provide a fully representative sample of the companies as the implementation of BIM will have an impact on the whole business model of the firms. The organisations had differing aspirations and timescales for the implementation of BIM and to some extent this was demonstrated by the outcome of the audits. The results were found to be consistent with the findings of another major similar HS2 upskilling study which the authors were also involved in.


SUMMARY Realization that hard coastal infrastructures support lower biodiversity than natural habitats has prompted a wealth of research seeking to identify design enhancements offering ecological benefits. Some studies showed that artificial structures could be modified to increase levels of diversity. Most studies, however, only considered the short-term ecological effects of such modifications, even though reliance on results from short-term studies may lead to serious misjudgements in conservation. In this study, a seven-year experiment examined how the addition of small pits to otherwise featureless seawalls may enhance the stocks of a highly-exploited limpet. Modified areas of the seawall supported enhanced stocks of limpets seven years after the addition of pits. Modified areas of the seawall also supported a community that differed in the abundance of littorinids, barnacles and macroalgae compared to the controls. Responses to different treatments (numbers and size of pits) were species-specific and, while some species responded directly to differences among treatments, others might have responded indirectly via changes in the distribution of competing species. This type of habitat enhancement can have positive long-lasting effects on the ecology of urban seascapes. Understanding of species interactions could be used to develop a rule-based approach to enhance biodiversity.


This article examines research on the specific training of musicians before they begin work as players in professional orchestras. Most of the research is in the area of education. The present article suggests that little research exists that is specific to the development of a traditional orchestra musician from an early age through the music education system, although considerable research exists on the development and broadening of the actual role of the professional musician in a changing world (portfolio careers).


The most pressing problems in Western New York in many areas of life, including education, healthcare, and criminal justice, can be traced to a single root: poverty. Families living in poverty suffer from lower graduation rates, more chronic diseases, and more criminal violence than families earning living wages. In our region, as around the nation, roughly 45% of workers are employed in low-wage service sector jobs. Those jobs are not going away; in fact, they are the fastest growing occupations in the economy. They do not require – or pay a premium for –high levels of education, and so gains in education will have a minimal impact on the wages they pay (already, more than two in five restaurant workers have some college education). The key to reducing poverty and the myriad, expensive problems it causes is to raise the wages of service sector workers.


BACKGROUND: There is controversy as to whether the clinicopathological features of colorectal cancer in the setting of IBD are distinct from sporadic colorectal cancer. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to compare the characteristics and outcomes between IBD-associated and sporadic colorectal cancer. DESIGN: This retrospective population-based cohort study used the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Medicare-linked database. SETTINGS: This study was conducted in 6 US metropolitan areas enrolled in Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results. PATIENTS: Beneficiaries of Medicare parts A and B identified from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results database with a diagnosis of IBD-associated or sporadic colorectal cancer who underwent surgical resection were included in the study. MAIN OUTCOMES MEASURES: The main outcome was death. The adjusted risk ratio for death compared patients with IBD-associated colorectal cancer with patients who had sporadic colorectal cancer. RESULTS: Patients with IBD-associated colorectal cancer were more likely to present at an earlier stage, use immunosuppression, and have metachronous colorectal cancer. Although total proctocolectomy was more common among IBD patients with colorectal cancer, the majority (>75%) underwent a segmental resection. Cancer-specific survival was worse for IBD-associated colorectal cancer vs sporadic colorectal cancer (mean, 32.9 months vs 42.4 months). After adjusting for potential confounders, older age, male sex, higher stage, IBD, immunosuppression, neoadjuvant radiation, and metachronous tumor were associated with a higher risk of cancer-specific mortality. Among patients with IBD, there was no difference in cancer-specific survival for segmental colectomy vs proctocolectomy. LIMITATIONS: This is a retrospective cohort study utilizing insurance data dependent on the correct coding of patient claims. CONCLUSION: Older patients with IBD-associated colorectal cancer appear to have a slightly worse outcome than those with sporadic colorectal cancer. The cause of this is multifactorial, but it does not appear to be associated with a more limited surgical resection.


A method for obtaining the optimal canonic design of optical filters based on parallel-cascaded arrays of symmetric two-port microring networks is presented. The approach is based on the all-pass decomposition of the parallel-cascaded microring architecture, whereby the filter is transformed into an equivalent sum-difference all-pass microring circuit via a similarity transformation of the transfer matrix. The sum-difference transformation also helps reveal important properties of the parallel-cascaded microring architecture, such as the doubly complementary nature of its transfer functions, and the existence and uniqueness of the canonic form of parallel-cascaded arrays of symmetric microring networks.


Despite the increasing range of treatment options for patients with Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), there are a number of real-world barriers that prevent many patients from achieving and maintaining glycaemic control. The objective of this symposium was to provide an overview of the challenges in T2DM treatment and to discuss novel strategies that may overcome these issues. The symposium started by exploring the key barriers that prevent patients from achieving glycaemic control, highlighting patient non-adherence to treatment as the major contributor to poor glycaemic control in a real-world setting. The speakers then explored the issue of non-adherence further, focussing on patient and physicianrelated contributing factors, including patient perceptions of treatment value and burden, fears of hypoglycaemia, and patient–physician interactions. The symposium ended with a presentation on potential strategies to improve treatment adherence and clinical outcomes in T2DM. Clinical evidence was presented suggesting that effective methods for helping patients to attain and maintain glycaemic control include both early treatment with intensive combination therapy and treatment with fixed-dose combinations of a glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) receptor agonist and a basal insulin analogue (iDegLira and iGlarLixi). Novel drug delivery methods were highlighted as a potential strategy for improving patient adherence and treatment success, with data presented on the efficacy and safety of ITCA 650 (Intarcia Therapeutics Inc., Boston, Massachusetts, USA), a subdermal osmotic mini-pump that provides continuous delivery of a GLP-1 receptor agonist. The symposium concluded with a summary of the main points, in which the need for new strategies to address the issue of non-adherence to therapy in T2DM was emphasised.


Twenty-seven authors from a variety of backgrounds contribute essays concerning the distance, historically and theologically, between the historical Jesus and the Gospel of John to this collection. Part One discusses issues related to the historical and ideological context in which the Fourth Gospel was produced. Part Two explores the possibility of oral and written sources that John may have utilized. Part Three compares the Fourth Gospel with early noncanonical literature to identify various ways in which Jesus' traditions were appropriated by early Christians.


In this paper, I use nexus analysis framework to examine how one quadriplegic man from Oman, named Yahya, directs the course of his present (and his future) through anticipatory discourse. In particular, I analyze conversations between Yahya and me regarding his future as they relate to actions I undertake on his behalf to effect a social change: to secure Yahya, an unmarried man, a permit to hire his own resident nurse/assistant (permits for such hirings are reserved only for married couples in Oman). I demonstrate how Yahya influences me to follow his agenda through constructing a helpless identity in narrative discourse. Reciprocally, I suggest that through the actions Yahya's caregivers subsequently undertake, they succeed in giving him a sense of control over an important aspect of his life (being able to hire his own assistant), and I demonstrate how Yahya subsequently displays agentivity in his narratives. I thus illustrate the interconnectedness of Yahya's anticipatory discourse and his caregivers' (macro-level) actions that cause societal change, as well as the interconnectedness of these actions and the kinds of selves Yahya constructs through anticipatory discourse in private (micro-level) interactions.


Abstract At the beginning of the Neogene a remarkable faunal turnover occurred within the North American carnivore community. The dominant larger Oligocene carnivores (creodonts, nimravid cats, the amphicyonid Daphoenus) became extinct during the late Oligocene and were replaced in the early Miocene by amphicyonine amphicyonids and hemicyonine ursids that entered North America from Eurasia. During a five million-year interval from ∼23 to 18 Ma, large amphicyonines appear in late Arikareean and early Hemingfordian faunas of the North American midcontinent. Although most fossils are from western Nebraska and southeastern Wyoming, occurrences of amphicyonines at several sites in the eastern United States (Delaware, Florida) indicate that they rapidly established a broad geographic distribution in North America during the early Miocene. This report describes and summarizes the North American specimens of the rare immigrant amphicyonine Ysengrinia, the first large amphicyonine to enter the New World. Ysengrinia exists in North America from ∼23 to 19 Ma, becoming extinct at the end of the late Arikareean. A single species of Ysengrinia is recognized in North America: Y. americana (Wortman, 1901), comb. nov., restricted to the late Arikareean of western Nebraska and southeastern Wyoming. The North American hypodigm includes the only known complete skull of the genus, associated with a mandible and partial postcranial skeleton. Because most Eurasian occurrences of Ysengrinia are limited to mandibles or isolated teeth of single individuals, intraspecific variation in teeth and skeleton in these carnivores has been difficult to determine. The more complete North American specimens provide estimates of dental and osteological variation in Ysengrinia, and suggest that the North American species is dimorphic. Skeletal remains of early Miocene New World Ysengrinia are most often found in riparian and waterhole environments.


The analysis of achievements, problems and prospects of high-temperature superconductivity (HTSC) in the macroand nanostructured materials has been given. The main experimental results and theoretical models describing the physical mechanisms of the superconductivity appearance at phenomenological and microscopic levels, including change in the energy spectrum of atoms in these materials with the advent of the 'superconducting' gap at temperatures below the critical transition, as well as the above-critical temperature 'pseudo-gap' have been analyzed. Although the origin of the pseudo-gap is not completely understood, it can be considered as an independent phase transition in the substance prior to the transition to the zero resistance state and insusceptibility (or insensitivity) to external magnetic field in high-temperature superconductors. Features of multi-gap and gapless superconducting materials as well as their ability to further increase the temperature of supercritical transition are discussed. Large resources to create the necessary electron and phonon spectra in the process of high-temperature superconductivity formation are associated with the use of nanoscale structures and nanoparticles of conductors and dielectrics. Electrical conductive contacts between nanoparticles and tunnel chains of nanoclusters, where delocalized electron spectra form similar energy shells to the atomic or nuclear shells, play a significant part here. It is required to further investigate the occurrence of high-temperature superconductivity at the level of interphase layers (non-autonomous phases) in nanostructures containing a large fraction of the substance in this condition. It is essential to develop adequate methods for synthesis of nanoparticles of variable size, structure and morphology, as well as techniques for their consolidation that would ensure the preservation of superconductivity of individual nanoparticles, their chemical, thermal, magnetic and current stability in the dissipative processes with functional and fluctuation effects.


The North American Lightning Detection Network (NALDN) is a commercial lightning detection network operated by Vaisala Inc., and is composed of the U.S. National Lightning Detection Network (NLDN) and the Environment Canada owned Canadian Lightning Detection Network (CLDN). The CN Tower is one of the best sites in the world to observe the lightning phenomenon and provides an excellent opportunity to evaluate the performance of the NALDN in the Toronto area. Using CN Tower lightning data acquired during 2005, the performance characteristics of the NALDN were thoroughly evaluated, including the flash detection efficiency (DE), stroke DE, absolute location error, peak current estimation and location accuracy model (50%, 90% and 99% error ellipses) error. Although a similar test was performed using rocket-triggered lightning in Florida at Camp Blanding, this test evaluated a completely different region of the NALDN. Moreover, rocket-triggered lightning artificially initiates a lightning discharge, whereas lightning events to the CN Tower occur naturally and are similar to discharges that occur to tall structures or objects at high altitude or mountainous areas. Excluding two flashes understood to be composed of M-components, the NALDN detected 7 out of 7 flashes recorded at the CN Tower, resulting in a 100% flash DE. Furthermore, the NALDN detected 22 out of 39 strokes recorded at the CN Tower, resulting in a stroke DE of 56%. Relative to the CN Tower, the NALDN was found to have a median absolute location error of 0.356 km and a mean error of 0.390 km for the 22 strokes it detected. It was also demonstrated that the NALDN stroke location error seems to have a large bias towards the north of the CN Tower and a slight bias towards the east, with 19 of the 22 strokes predicted north-east of the CN Tower. The 50%, 90% and 99% error ellipses provided by the NALDN were also evaluated. It was found that 73% (16 out of the 22) detected strokes were enclosed by the 50% error ellipse, 91% (20 out of the 22) detected strokes were enclosed by the 90% error ellipse and 95% (21 out of the 22) detected strokes were enclosed by the 99% error ellipse. The minimum value for the 50% error ellipse axes is set at 0.4 km by Vaisala, and 21 out of the 22 detected strokes had a semi-major axis length of 0.4 km, suggesting that the median location error for CN Tower strokes is 0.4 or less. The 0.356 km median location error obtained for the 22 detected strokes appears to support this.


"Gunnar and Karin have not only defined a large collection of use-case patterns and examples of how specific usages are to be modeled in a use-case model, they have also provided an accurate, complete, and comprehensible description of the constructs used in use-case modeling... I am impressed by this book."-From the Foreword by Ivar JacobsonEmploy the proven concept of design patterns to build more accurate, usable, and maintainable use-case modelsThis book brings together dozens of proven patterns for creating use cases that more accurately reflect real requirements, are easier to translate into working systems, and are simpler to maintain. Utilizing these patterns, architects, analysts, engineers, and managers can leverage decades of hard-earned knowledge to achieve far better results, far more quickly.The authors carefully describe how each pattern works, what problems it is intended to solve, and the consequences associated with using it. All patterns are supported with detailed examples and platform-independent class models that demonstrate how they may be realized. All constructs and diagrams reflect the current UML 2.0 standard. This book also includes an insightful use-case primer that will be indispensable both to novices and veteran modelers seeking to become more effective.Coverage includes Modeling rules that lead to more comprehensible, maintainable, and correct models Patterns for structuring, layering, mapping, sequencing, and viewing use cases more effectively Blueprints for security, legacy integration, data input/ output, task scheduling, and reporting Constructing use cases that separate mandatory elements from optional parts that can be delivered separately Incorporating business rules in use-case modeling Practical techniques for documenting use cases more effectively When to use multiple patterns and blueprints together Identifying and avoiding eight common mistakes in use-case modeling: guidance for designers and reviewers Examples from a wide range of application domainsRely on this book as the world's #1 reference to reusable use-case solutions-and as a catalyst for inspiration in all your use-case modeling projects.© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.


Complex nano-architectures with ordered two-dimensional (2D) building blocks are a class of promising electrocatalysts for different electrochemical technologies. In this work, a novel template-engaged strategy followed by sequential etching and phosphorization treatments is demonstrated to fabricate open and hierarchical Ni–Co–P hollow nanobricks (HNBs) via the assembly of oriented 2D nanosheets. Benefiting from the unique nano-architectures with large electrolyte-accessible surface and abundant mass diffusion pathways, the as-prepared Ni–Co–P HNBs exhibit high electrocatalytic activity, which affords the current density of 10 mA cm−2 at low overpotentials of 270 mV and 107 mV for oxygen and hydrogen evolution reactions respectively, and excellent stability in an alkaline medium. Remarkably, when used as both the anode and cathode, a low cell voltage of 1.62 V is required to reach the current density of 10 mA cm−2, making the Ni–Co–P HNBs an efficient bifunctional electrocatalyst for overall water splitting.


This paper reports findings of an economic evaluation study of alternative smallholder cashew technologies to increase production. The objective of the study was to provide farm level insights to help evaluate returns to smallholders' resources, particularly to the labor time smallholders allocate to different competing enterprises under alternative crop production technologies. Key research questions included: (a) under what conditions is it financially attractive for Mozambican smallholder farmers to expand production and improve quality of cashew nuts? (b) related to these, what are the investment decisions and available alternative technological options smallholders need to consider in order to achieve the expected cashew production increases and quality improvements? (c) What incentives and institutional support will be required for smallholders to adopt these alternative and new technologies in an environment where cashews are not the main crop?


Education has received considerable attention worldwide; however, its low success rate in Kenya both in terms of quality and quantity warrants further investigation. The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of political and cultural factors on education. The political factor constitutes government resource support, internet and policy on quality of teachers whereas the cultural factor focuses on early marriages, polygamy and female genital mutilations. Drawing on the theory of source-positionperformance, source of education should be promoted through various approaches. In the paper we propose a couple of approaches to build capability.


Societal development is dependent on the generation of ecosystem services (ES) to sustain it; however, many ES are degrading. This thesis investigates how social-ecological features behind practices of actor groups shape the generation of ES. The empirical basis is case studies in the urban landscape of Stockholm, Sweden, and the methodological approach is interdisciplinary. Paper I shows that the urban landscape owes it current flow of ES to co-evolutionary processes and that governance with the aim of sustaining ES must take into account historical property rights and the involvement of a diversity of actor groups, as well as ecological processes of the larger landscape. Paper II studies allotment gardens, cemeteries and city parks in relation to the generation of pollination, seed dispersal and pest regulation. Differences in social features behind practice are reflected primary as higher abundance of pollinators in the informally managed allotment gardens and as differences in the compositions of seed dispersers and insectivores' birds. Thus, voluntary and often ignored actor groups, motivated by sense-of-place, support the generation of some ES here. Paper III shows how practice, linked to ES generation, is retained and stored among allotment gardeners, and modified and transmitted through time, by means of social-ecological memory (SE-memory). SE-memory is an emergent property of a dual process of participation and reification and it facilitates monitoring of local change and links practice, often in habits, to place specific processes that underlie provisioning ES. Paper IV explores how spatial scale mismatches between ecological process and processes of management can be bridged by a spatially explicit and flexible social network structure of governance. Urban ES are a product of human driven co-evolution, consequently sustaining ES in urban landscapes is not about conservation without people, but shaped by and dependent on management practice by people. Practice that links to generation of ES are facilitated by SE-memory of local actors that holds long term management rights. Consequently, local communities of ecosystem practice, which contribute to the production of ES should explicitly be taken into account in urban green governance.


Since comparative educationists and education systems experts are expected to advise governments and departments of education regarding the transformation of education in their countries and also because they have an intrinsic scholarly interest in political transformation and its effects on the education system, an investigation was launched into recent experiences in this regard concerning one pivotal aspect of education systems, namely education control. The transformations undergone since the early 1990s by Serbia, Croatia and South Africa were examined, particularly with respect to how the respective authorities transformed the control of education in their systems. The study yielded a number of insights that could be fruitfully applied in similar situations in future. Key concepts: education system, education control, transformation, Transitiology, Serbia, Croatia,


Precision medicine necessitates large scale collections of genomes and phenomes. Despite decreases in the costs of genomic technologies, collecting these types of information at scale is still a daunting task that poses logistical challenges and requires consortium-scale resources. Here, we describe DNA.Land, a digital biobank to collect genome and phenomes with a fraction of the resources of traditional studies at the same scale. Our approach relies on crowd-sourcing data from the rapidly growing number of individuals that have access to their own genomic datasets through Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) companies. To recruit participants, we developed a series of automatic return-of-results features in DNA.Land that increase users' engagement while stratifying human subject research protection. So far, DNA.Land has collected over 43,000 genomes in 20 months of operation, orders of magnitude higher than previous digital attempts by academic groups. We report lessons learned in running a digital biobank, our technical framework, and our approach regarding ethical, legal, and social implications.


Abstract Particle fluxes on surfaces are difficult to calculate with Monte Carlo codes because the score requires a division by the surface-crossing angle cosine, and grazing angles lead to inaccuracies. We revisit the standard practice of dividing by half of a cosine "cutoff" for particles whose surface-crossing cosines are below the cutoff. We concentrate on the flux crossing an external boundary, deriving the standard approach in a manner that explicitly points out three assumptions: (a) that the external boundary surface flux is isotropic or mostly isotropic, (b) that the cosine cutoff is small, and (c) that the minimum possible surface-crossing cosine is 0. We find that the requirement for accuracy of the standard surface flux estimate is more restrictive for external boundaries (a very isotropic surface flux) than for internal surfaces (an isotropic or linearly anisotropic surface flux). Numerical demonstrations involve analytic and semianalytic solutions for monoenergetic point sources irradiating surfaces with no scattering. We conclude with a discussion of potentially more robust approaches.


Mutation in the LMNA gene, encoding Lamin A/C, cause a diverse group of diseases called laminopathies. Cardiac involvement is the major cause of death and manifests as dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM), heart failure, arrhythmias, and sudden death. There is no specific therapy for LMNA-associated cardiomyopathy. We report that deletion of Lmna in cardiac myocytes in mice leads to severe cardiac dysfunction, conduction defect, ventricular arrhythmias, fibrosis, apoptosis, and premature death within 4 weeks. The phenotype is similar to LMNA-associated cardiomyopathy in humans. RNA sequencing, performed prior to the onset of cardiac dysfunction, led to identification of 2,338 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in Lmna-deleted cardiac myocytes. DEGs predicted activation of bromodomain-containing protein 4 (BRD4), a regulator of chromatin-associated proteins and transcription factors, which was confirmed by complementary approaches, including chromatin immunoprecipitation-sequencing. Daily injection of JQ1, a specific BET bromodomain inhibitor partially reversed the DEGs, including those encoding secretome, improved cardiac function, abrogated cardiac arrhythmias, fibrosis, and apoptosis, and prolonged the median survival time by 2-fold in the myocyte-specific Lmna-deleted mice. The findings highlight the important role of LMNA in cardiac myocyte and identify BET bromodomain inhibition as a potential therapeutic target in LMNA-associated cardiomyopathy, for which there is no specific effective therapy.


Giant cell hepatitis is a well-known histological feature of several neonatal and infantile liver diseases. In contrast, postinfantile giant cell hepatitis is rarely identified in adult liver biopsies. It has been associated with varying etiologies, mainly viral infections, drug toxicity, and autoimmunity. Here, we report an 18-year-old, previously healthy man with acute liver failure, who showed giant cell hepatitis in a liver biopsy. There was no evidence of viral hepatitis A-E, autoimmunity, and no drug history. Diagnostic work-up revealed Wilson's disease as the underlying disease. As syncytial giant cell formation is thought to be a uniform reaction pattern not related to any specific etiology, copper toxicity in Wilson's disease might cause giant cell formation. In contrast, our patient recalled a recent cytomegalovirus infection, which was confirmed serologically. Therefore, the giant cell formation might also be a fingerprint of an intercurrent cytomegalovirus infection as the common trigger for both giant cell hepatitis and decompensation of Wilson's disease.


Narrative identity has achieved a scientific status as an elaborate concept of the storied nature of human experience and personal identity. Yet, many questions remain as to its empirical substrate. By exploring the pragmatic aspect of narrative research interviewing, i.e., the performative and positioning aspects of the narrative situation and the narrative product, as well as its particular autoepistemological and communicative tasks, this article tries to bridge the gap between the theoretical concept of narrative identity and the act of constructing identity in research interviewing.Research data generated by autobiographical interviews are usually regarded and analyzed as monological narratives drawn from autobiographical memory. Narrative research interviewing, however, is always a dialogical, pragmatic activity: Narrator and researcher establish an interpersonal relationship made up of institutional, imaginative, socio-categorial and other communicative frames which are enacted by both partners during the interview. This pragmatic constitution of the interview as an interactive process calls for a communicative and constructivist approach to oral narratives which reveals different levels of the listener's conceptions of himself or herself and the research situation in the narrator's story. Along with the different voices and identity constructions, the narrator also constructs different recipients in his or her discursive positioning of the listener.By using the concept of positioning, we propose both a conceptual framework and the corresponding analytical tools for identifying textual indicators and contextual interpretative resources for a discursive approach to narrative identity constructions in research interviewing. This option allows insight into the strategies narrators employ to negotiate their identities in the situation itself, which may be fruitful for many research contexts that use the concept of narrative identity. (Narrative, Autobiography, Research Interviewing, Conversation Analysis)


Ex Machina (2014) impressed critics and audiences alike with its bold ideas and all-too-realistic depiction of the unexpected consequences of constructing a sentient being. In his feature directorial debut, Alex Garland uses efficient storytelling, a compelling narrative, and heady concepts to create a modern science fiction masterpiece that explores gender, scientific advancement, and the very concept of humanity, all in a compelling, suspenseful film. Artificial intelligence has long been a sci-fi staple, but here, Garland posits what would happen if, for once, humans, rather than AI, were the real villains. In exploring Ex Machina's ideas about consciousness, embodiment, and masculinity, all through the lens of a misogynist mad scientist, Joshua Grimm argues the result is a fascinating, truly unique film that immediately established Garland as a breakout voice in the landscape of science fiction film.


Nonparametric regression on complex domains has been a challenging task as most existing methods, such as ensemble models based on binary decision trees, are not designed to account for intrinsic geometries and domain boundaries. This article proposes a Bayesian additive regression spanning trees (BAST) model for nonparametric regression on manifolds, with an emphasis on complex constrained domains or irregularly shaped spaces embedded in Euclidean spaces. Our model is built upon a random spanning tree manifold partition model as each weak learner, which is capable of capturing any irregularly shaped spatially contiguous partitions while respecting intrinsic geometries and domain boundary constraints. Utilizing many nice properties of spanning tree structures, we design an efficient Bayesian inference algorithm. Equipped with a soft prediction scheme, BAST is demonstrated to significantly outperform other competing methods in simulation experiments and in an application to the chlorophyll data in Aral Sea, due to its strong local adaptivity to different levels of smoothness.


High susceptibility of the African population to develop cardiovascular disease obliges us to investigate possible contributing risk factors. Our aim was to determine whether low 25(OH)D status is associated with increased blood pressure and carotid-radial pulse wave velocity in black South African women. We studied 291 urban women (mean age: 57.56±9.00 yrs.). 25(OH)D status was determined by serum 25(OH)D levels. Women were stratified into sufficient (>30 ng/ml), and insufficient/deficient (<30 ng/ml) groups. Cardiovascular variables were compared between groups. Women with low 25(OH)D levels had significantly higher SBP (150.8±27.1 vs. 137.6±21.0), DBP (94.7±14.5 vs. 89.3±12.3) and PP (53.15(50.7;55.7) vs. 46.3(29.4;84.6)) compared to women with sufficient levels. No significant difference was observed with regards to c-rPWV. ANCOVA analyses still revealed significant differences between the two groups with regards to SBP, DBP as well as PP. Partial correlations revealed significant inverse association between SBP and 25(OH)D (p = .04;r = −.12). Women with low 25(OH)D levels were ∼2 times more likely to have high SBP (95% CI: 3.23;1.05). To conclude, women with deficient/insufficient 25(OH)D had significantly higher SBP compared to women with a sufficient 25(OH) status.


Electronic spreadsheets play an indispensable role in the simulation, modeling, and analysis of bioenergy systems, and their results have the ability to affect decision-making significantly. Prior research has shown that spreadsheets are highly error-prone, and that a large percentage of these errors are difficult to detect. To that end, we developed computer code (implemented in Visual Basic for Applications, running under Microsoft Excel) to detect a particularly insidious form of spreadsheet error: the hard-coding error. These errors are defined as the presence of one or more unreferenced numerical values in a cell formula. Hard-coding errors are dangerous because they are a likely source of erroneous constants and/or non-updating assumptions. The code was used to audit six spreadsheets relevant to bioenergy systems, three developed in our lab (and reported on in other sessions at the AIM), and three in the public domain. The preliminary audit results were analyzed to understand the nature and distribution of hard-coding errors. The preponderance and diversity of hard-coding errors in these spreadsheets motivated us to subcategorize them. Together, the hard-coding error detection program and sub-categorization program provide a robust and rapid means of detecting and categorizing multiple types of hard-coding errors. Use of these programs could increase the reliability of spreadsheet software used in simulation, modeling, and analysis of bioenergy systems.


Hempseed has become a popular supplement alternative due to the confounding nutritional benefits it possesses; however, the legality of hempseed, and other hemp products, prevents the use in animal feeds. Particularly, broiler chickens that grow fairly quickly in a short amount of time. Evaluation of hempseed in the broiler chicken diet is needed to conclude if it is a possible replacement for other broiler nutrient sources, such as soybean meal (SBM). Thus, the objective of this study was to evaluate effects of hempseed (HS) on the growth, feed conversion and carcass yield of broilers. This study consisted of 48 Ross 708 broilers housed in individual cages. The broiler diets consisted of a grower concentrate with: Control (0% HS, 15% SBM), 10% HS (5% SBM) and 15% HS (0% SBM). Body weights, feed conversion ratios and carcass yields were measured. Net weight gain was observed, F(2, 45) = 1.45, p = 0.25, where no diet group was significant. Average daily weight gain was similar F(2, 45) = 1.18, p = 0.32. However, the feed conversion ratio (FCR) was statistically significant F(2, 45) = 4.39, p = 0.02, resulting in the Control diet to have the best FCR and the 15% HS diet with the worse FCR. Carcass yield was not significant F(2, 45) = 2.93, p = 0.06. Data indicates the hempseed diets did not benefit the broilers' performance, however, the feed analysis determined the hempseed fiber content was higher than recommended for broiler nutrition. Adjustments to the diet should be made to determine the correct amounts of protein and fiber.


Many surface and
dynamical processes affect the evolution of asteroids in our solar
system today. The spectral slopes of S and Q-type asteroids are
altered by the weathering of their surfaces due to solar wind
interactions and micrometeorite impacts, as well as any processes
that work to remove that weathered material. These processes of space
weathering and asteroid resurfacing compete with each other to
determine the spectral slope of each asteroid, with space weathering
raising the spectral slope
and resurfacing
lowering it. By considering the distribution of spectral slopes with
respect to orbital location and size, we can determine which
potential resurfacing processes are the most dominant. I show that
the distribution of spectral slopes with respect to size is present
in all populations of S and Q-type asteroids in the inner solar
system, regardless of orbit. I also show that the spectral slopes of
S and Q-type Near-Earth Asteroids (NEAs) decrease with decreasing
perihelion, but only for perihelia q < 0.9 AU.
 By building Monte
Carlo and models N-body simulations of asteroids, I test which
resurfacing mechanisms are consistent with these trends in spectral
slopes. I find that spin-up and failure from the
Yarkovsky-O'Keefe-Radzievskii-Paddack (YORP) effect is an important
resurfacing mechanism that creates the observed weathering trends
with size. I also show that resurfacing asteroids due to close
encounters with the terrestrial planets cannot explain the spectral
slope vs. perihelion trend at q .
0.9 AU, but that
resurfacing asteroids due to thermally induced surface degradation,
by assuming a power law relationship between the resurfacing
timescale and the solar distance, gives much more consistent results.
 I also explore the
creation rate of asteroid pairs, which are asteroids that have very
similar orbits but are not gravitationally bound. The majority of
pairs are formed by YORP spin-up and fission, followed by a
separation of the two members. Asteroid pairs are then disassociated
over time as their orbits become less similar due to chaos,
resonances, and the Yarkovsky effect. I simulate both the formation
of asteroid pairs in the inner main belt via YORP and their
subsequent disassociation. By comparing the distribution of orbital
similarity distances from observations and from our model, I estimate
that asteroids fission and create an asteroid pair every 8 − 13
YORP cycles, where a YORP cycle is twice the time it takes the YORP
effect to change the spin rate of an asteroid from zero to its
critical spin rate. I argue that the rate of fissioning via the YORP
effect is not substantially limited by any stagnation or stochastic
evolution, and that losing mass via rotational fission is much less
effective than collisional disruption, even for small asteroids.


To meet the Paris agreement, CO2 emissions from road transport need to be severely lowered. In Sweden, as in many other countries, the number of electric vehicles (EVs) is increasing rapidly. This has led to a recurring debate on whether EVs will help reduce climate impact or not. The aim of this paper is to analyze the Swedish debate on the climate impact of EVs with respect to framing and validity of the arguments. Thirty-one opinion pieces published between 2010 and 2018 are studied. Two discourse coalitions are identified; supporters and opponents of EVs. The opponents' main argument is that EVs use imported, coal-fired electricity with high CO2 emissions. The supporters argue that EVs use Swedish, fossil-free electricity, thereby causing no CO2 emissions. Neither coalition's arguments are wholly valid, but nor are they wholly false. Swedish electricity production is largely fossil free, but, at times of high electricity demand, fossil-based electricity is imported. Thus, Swedish EVs often use fossil-free electricity, but sometimes they do not. This is likely to continue with a large-scale transition to electromobility. Both discourse coalitions motivate their positions with a desire to reduce climate impact. EV supporters are optimistic about technology development and frame EVs as fundamental for future carbon-neutral possibilities. While EV opponents are pessimistic, their framing of the issue implies a need for society to assume responsibility for sustainability in a wide system perspective. This should be acknowledged and used by policy-makers, to ensure that EVs' full potential for climate change mitigation be realized.


A volume in Research in Science Education Series Editors Dennis W. Sunal, University of Alabama and Emmett L. Wright, Kansas State University The Impact of the Laboratory and Technology on K-12 Science Learning and Teaching examines the development, use, and influence of active laboratory experiences and the integration of technology in science teaching. This examination involves the viewpoints of policymakers, researchers, and teachers that are expressed through research involving original documents, interviews, analysis and synthesis of the literature, case studies, narrative studies, observations of teachers and students, and assessment of student learning outcomes. Volume 3 of the series, Research in Science Education, addresses the needs of various constituencies including teachers, administrators, higher education science and science education faculty, policymakers, governmental and professional agencies, and the business community. The guiding theme of this volume is the role of practical laboratory work and the use of technology in science learning and teaching, K- 16. The volume investigates issues and concerns related to this theme through various perspectives addressing design, research, professional practice, and evaluation. Beginning with definitions, the historical evolution and policy guiding these learning experiences are explored from several viewpoints. Effective design and implementation of laboratory work and technology experiences is examined for elementary and high school classrooms as well as for undergraduate science laboratories, informal settings, and science education courses and programs. In general, recent research provides evidence that students do benefit from inquirybased laboratory and technology experiences that are integrated with classroom science curricula. The impact and status of laboratory and technology experiences is addressed by exploring specific strategies in a variety of scientific fields and courses. The chapters outline and describe in detail researchbased best practices for a variety of settings.


Water network partitioning in district metering areas, or sectorization, is an important process for improving water network management. It can help water utilities to implement active leakage control, conduct pressure management, and prevent network contamination. It is generally achieved by closing some network pipes, thus reducing pipe redundancy and affecting system performance. No systematic set of performance indices has been defined to evaluate a sectorization design and thus allow for a comparison of different possible sectorizations on a formal basis. In this paper, several performance indices for water network partitioning are proposed and tested using two real water supply systems: Parete in Italy and Matamoros in Mexico. Both systems' sectorizations were previously designed by a novel effective automatic technique recently developed by the authors. For both the original and sectorized networks, the proposed performance indices considered energy dissipated in the network, network resilience, pressure variation, fire-fighting capacity, water age, and mechanical redundancy. Network resilience appears to be the most representative index for the entire network, whereas pressure variation indices are more appropriate for describing individual districts. Except for fire-fighting capacity in one network, system performance did not appear to be affected significantly after sectorization.


Unstable burst fractures of the atlas require sufficient immobilisation either with an external device or by surgical fusion. In patients with pre-existing congenital atlantal defects the decision whether to recommend non-operative or operative therapy is difficult. Treatment options are controversially discussed and standardised guidelines are not available. Although most surgeons advise operative fusion or osteosynthesis in atlanto-axial instability, non-operative immobilisation can be successful. We report on a patient with an unstable C1 burst fracture with a congenital posterior cleft in the atlantal arch who was treated with cervical extension and halovest immobilisation. Although callus bridging was initially observed, 9 months after the injury there was no sufficient fracture consolidation and surgical fusion had to be advised. While non-operative treatment may work in patients without congenital defects of the C1 arch, such is not recommended in patients who present with this anomaly.


Much research energy in software engineering is focused on the creation of effort and defect prediction models. Such models are important means for practitioners to judge their current project situation, optimize the allocation of their resources, and make informed future decisions. However, software engineering data contains a large amount of variability. Recent research demonstrates that such variability leads to poor fits of machine learning models to the underlying data, and suggests splitting datasets into more fine-grained subsets with similar properties. In this paper, we present a comparison of three different approaches for creating statistical regression models to model and predict software defects and development effort. Global models are trained on the whole dataset. In contrast, local models are trained on subsets of the dataset. Last, we build a global model that takes into account local characteristics of the data. We evaluate the performance of these three approaches in a case study on two defect and two effort datasets. We find that for both types of data, local models show a significantly increased fit to the data compared to global models. The substantial improvements in both relative and absolute prediction errors demonstrate that this increased goodness of fit is valuable in practice. Finally, our experiments suggest that trends obtained from global models are too general for practical recommendations. At the same time, local models provide a multitude of trends which are only valid for specific subsets of the data. Instead, we advocate the use of trends obtained from global models that take into account local characteristics, as they combine the best of both worlds.


Preferential trade agreements could lead to a reallocation of resources across sectors and countries. Production patterns resulting from North-North regional integration initiatives have been documented in several studies. However, empirical evidence on South-South trade agreements is limited. The purpose of this paper is to fill this gap in the empirical literature by looking at the effects of the establishment of MERCOSUR on manufacturing production patterns in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay over the period 1985-1998. We find that deepened preferential trade liberalization has fostered a reshaping of manufacturing production structures according to regional comparative advantage in labor and skilled labor. Furthermore, declining internal tariffs have weakened agglomeration forces determined by the distribution of market sizes. By using GMM estimation techniques, we ensure that these results are robust to endogeneity and serial correlation.


An empirical analysis of the patching challenge faced by the average private user In this paper, we examine the software portfolio of the average user based on empirical data from over two million users frequently scanning their systems with Secunias Personal Software Inspector (PSI). Our analysis demonstrates, that the complexity and frequency of the actions required to keep a typical end-user system secure, most likely exceeds what users are willing, and able to invest. We classify typical software portfolios, and provide a tool for the community to estimate their individual security exposure and patch complexity. Our data demonstrates the need for coordinated patch solutions capable to update programs from diverse vendors, in order to protect end-users at global scale. An empirical analysis of the patching challenge faced by the average private user


The high-pressure phase transition in the deuterated lithium hydroxide crystalline state has been studied by Car-Parrinello molecular dynamics simulations, in the constant-pressure, constant-temperature ensemble. The recently developed metadynamics approach has been applied to encourage the system to transform into different phases in an affordable simulation time. A previously not completely characterized high-pressure phase has been obtained. The structural and spectroscopic properties have been studied and compared with the neutron scattering, infrared and Raman measurements. It has been found that the calculated structure differs slightly from the experimental hypothesis, and that the presence of strong hydrogen bonds is the source of the red shift and of the characteristic features of the OD-stretching bands in both IR and Raman spectra.


Study of English texts today takes place through two approaches: textual and cultural. The textual approach focuses on the study of a text's formal features. The cultural approach includes the study of social, cultural and political contexts within and beyond the text. Though these approaches are usually taken as separate, they should be used as complementary to each other. Simultaneous use of both approaches gives learners adequate exposure to the text as a source of language learning and of understanding human values.


In 1984, New Zealand introduced important policy reforms in order to address major macroeconomic and fiscal imbalances. New Zealand's support to agricultural producers rapidly decreased from 30 percent of the value of production to about 2 percent, and has remained the lowest among OECD economies since that time. After a difficult transition, the removal of subsidies resulted in a more diversified and competitive rural economy in New Zealand; total factor productivity growth has been roughly 2.5 percent annually since 1984, compared to roughly 1.5 percent in the prereform period. This Policy Review focuses on agricultural policy today and how New Zealand is supporting the agricultural sector now without resorting to subsidies. It describes the policy New Zealand uses to support farmers dealing with adverse events such as climatic disasters. It also describes New Zealand's strategy for promoting competiveness in world markets.


Monroe Freedman is well known as a proponent of the "standard conception" of legal ethics - that is, that a lawyer cannot be criticized in moral terms for actions taken in a representative capacity. Surprisingly, however, Freedman has argued that client selection is a decision for which a lawyer may be required to provide a justification in ordinary moral terms. This apparent inconsistency reveals a conceptual distinction in normative ethical theory, which is often blurred, between justifying a practice (in this case, the legal system or some specialized practice such as criminal defense) and justifying an action falling within the practice (here, either actions of a lawyer while representing a client or the decision to accept or decline the representation of a client). A practice as a whole must be justified on the basis of moral concepts, such as consequences, rights, and other values. Once a practice exists, however, particular "moves" within the practice are justified on the basis of the constitutive rules which make up the practice, not on the basis of underlying moral concepts. This is the practice conception of rules, defended by John Rawls in an influential 1955 paper. This paper makes two arguments - one metatheoretical and one a substantive argument within legal ethics. The methodological or metatheoretical argument is that professional ethics should proceed at one level of abstraction or another, but not equivocate back and forth between them. One can give systemic reasons why a lawyer ought to act on rules of a practice, and not on the basis of an all-things-considered moral evaluation of what she ought to do in the situation. Once committed to this style of reasoning, however, consistency demands that the frame of reference for the argument not suddenly be shifted to ordinary moral considerations. On the other hand, one might believe that clarity or some other consideration demands addressing questions of professional ethics exclusively in terms of first-order moral values. If one adopts that stance, however, it is impermissible to appeal to blanket permissions on the basis of the rules of the game. Every action must be justified on an all-things-considered basis. Subtle shifting between the two levels of justification creates unnecessary confusion, and may account for the occasionally frustrating nature of debates in legal ethics, where the participants seem to be talking past each other. Moreover, it is part of the general pattern of ethical justification in the public domain - including political and legal ethics - that the primary focus of evaluation is the institutional structure through which action occurs. This evaluative perspective, which is one rough distinction between political and moral philosophy, excludes from deliberation the full range of reasons that would ordinarily be relevant in practical reasoning. The client-selection debate, like any controversy within legal ethics, should therefore be resolved not as a matter of straightforwardly applying ordinary moral values, but in the way suggested by Rawls, with due attention given to the institutional setting of the action. The substantive argument within legal ethics is that the concept of agency does not require that a practice build in significant opportunities for the exercise of judgment on the basis of ordinary moral values. Reflective self-consciousness, which is constitutive of moral agency, is consistent with opting into a practice at a relatively high level of generality, and considering onself bound by the rules of the game. At the very least, whatever one may say in terms of moral agency, in support of an argument that a lawyer has moral discretion in client selection, can be said in support of an argument that a lawyer ought not to follow the standard conception while acting in a representative capacity. Client selection and representation stand or fall together, from the point of view of their effect on agency. This paper was prepared for a conference at Hofstra Law School in honor of the work of Monroe Freedman, and will appear in the Hofstra Law Review.


The Basel II Accord requires that banks and other Authorized Deposit-taking Institutions (ADIs) communicate their daily risk forecasts to the appropriate monetary authorities at the beginning of each trading day, using one or more risk models to measure Value-at-Risk (VaR). The risk estimates of these models are used to determine capital requirements and associated capital costs of ADIs, depending in part on the number of previous violations, whereby realised losses exceed the estimated VaR. In this paper we define risk management in terms of choosing sensibly from a variety of risk models, discuss the selection of optimal risk models, consider combining alternative risk models, discuss the choice between a conservative and aggressive risk management strategy, and evaluate the effects of the Basel II Accord on risk management. We also examine how risk management strategies performed during the 2008-09 financial crisis, evaluate how the financial crisis affected risk management practices, forecasting VaR and daily capital charges, and discuss alternative policy recommendations, especially in light of the financial crisis. These issues are illustrated using Standard and Poor's 500 Index, with an emphasis on how risk management practices were monitored and encouraged by the Basel II Accord regulations during the financial crisis.


The relationship between relativistic thinking and identity formation was examined. Relativistic thinking is the ability to accept the subjective nature of knowledge and values and has been shown to develop during college. It was predicted that as students become more relativistic in their thinking, they also realize that their own perception of reality is relative too. This causes an identity crisis, resulting in a mature identity. A one-year longitudinal study showed that changes in identity (increased moratorium) were related to changes in thinking (increased relativism). Students in different college majors were shown to think differently about the nature of knowledge and show different identities, supporting the idea that thinking is related to identity formation. Also, as students develop a mature sense of identity their locus of control orientations may change. An internal locus of control and relativistic thinking were related to the active exploration of identity, whereas belief in powerful others as determiners of one's fate and dualistic thinking were related to an immature identity. Finally, intimacy development was associated with identity and thinking. Students with a lot of experience in dating relationships (high intimacy development) were likely to be actively exploring their identities at the same time, supporting the idea that identity and intimacy development may occur at the same time. Yet, intimacy was not found to be related to relativistic thinking.


Best Value PIPS has become popular in the Netherlands and at the Hanze UAS. Hanze UAS started its first BV PIPS project in June 2011 and is currently performing seven projects. The Hanze UAS encountered major difficulties in the clarification period with an IT project. Therefore the main thrust of this paper is to explore the clarification and risk management phase. For this purpose the author uses an IT project as a case study. The conclusion is that it is in the clarification phase that the major paradigm shift takes place. BV practitioners must understand that the clarification phase is critical in the changing of the paradigm. The client and the vendor must continually implement the new BV concepts and lessons learned. This case study is similar to projects in the U.S., where the culture of the organization is the biggest challenge to the BV system.


Word Version April 9, 2014 To The Administrator Addressed: SUBJECT: Student Success Initiative and Accelerated Instruction The purpose of this letter is to inform school districts and open-enrollment charter schools of new accelerated instruction requirements and of certification of the Student Success Initiative (SSI). New Accelerated Instruction Requirements House Bill 5, 83rd Legislative Session, added new TEC §28.0217 to require each school district to provide accelerated instruction in the applicable subject area each time a student fails to perform satisfactorily on an end-of-course (EOC) assessment instrument. Accelerated instruction may require participation of the student before or after normal school hours and may include participation at times of the year outside normal school operations. House Bill 5 also amended TEC §29.081 to require school districts to offer, without cost to a student, additional accelerated instruction in any subject if the student failed to perform satisfactorily on an EOC assessment instrument that measures the knowledge and skills in that course and is required for graduation. Your district or charter school is required to separately budget and prioritize state compensatory education funding and any other funding necessary to sufficiently support the cost of additional accelerated instruction for students who fail to perform satisfactorily on an EOC assessment instrument. State compensatory education funds cannot be used for any other purpose until your district or charter school has sufficiently funded additional accelerated instruction. Your school district or charter school must use program intent code 24 when coding additional accelerated instruction expenditures. TEC §29.081 as amended by HB 5 also requires each school district to evaluate the effectiveness of accelerated instruction programs for high school students and to hold an annual public hearing to consider the results of the evaluation. Certification This letter serves as my certification that sufficient funds have been appropriated to support implementation of accelerated instruction programs for grades three through eight as well as for high school for the 2013-2014 and 2014-2015 school years as specified under Texas Education Code (TEC) §§28.0211 and 28.0217, the Student Success Initiative. If you have any questions regarding budgeting of compensatory education funding, please contact the Financial Accountability Division in the Office of School Finance by email at firstname.lastname@example.com or by phone at (512) 463-9238. If you have any questions regarding accelerated instruction, please contact the Curriculum Division by email at firstname.lastname@example.com or by phone at (512) 463-9581. Sincerely, Michael Williams Commissioner of Education


Abstract. The theoretical framework of a novel approach for absolute radar calibration is presented and its potential analysed by means of synthetic data to lay out a solid basis for future practical application. The method presents the advantage of an absolute calibration with respect to the directly measured reflectivity, without needing a previously calibrated reference device. It requires a setup comprising three radars: two devices oriented towards each other, measuring reflectivity along the same horizontal beam and operating within a strongly attenuated frequency range (e.g. K or X band), and one vertical reflectivity and drop size distribution (DSD) profiler below this connecting line, which is to be calibrated. The absolute determination of the calibration factor is based on attenuation estimates. Using synthetic, smooth and geometrically idealised data, calibration is found to perform best using homogeneous precipitation events with rain rates high enough to ensure a distinct attenuation signal (reflectivity above ca. 30 dBZ). Furthermore, the choice of the interval width (in measuring range gates) around the vertically pointing radar, needed for attenuation estimation, is found to have an impact on the calibration results. Further analysis is done by means of synthetic data with realistic, inhomogeneous precipitation fields taken from measurements. A calibration factor is calculated for each considered case using the presented method. Based on the distribution of the calculated calibration factors, the most probable value is determined by estimating the mode of a fitted shifted logarithmic normal distribution function. After filtering the data set with respect to rain rate and inhomogeneity and choosing an appropriate length of the considered attenuation path, the estimated uncertainty of the calibration factor is of the order of 1 to 11 %, depending on the chosen interval width. Considering stability and accuracy of the method, an interval of eight range gates on both sides of the vertically pointing radar is most appropriate for calibration in the presented setup.


Carboniferous to Permian basins reflected compression regime of the Variscan orogeny during the continent-continent collision in final stages. The fragments of these microplates are preserved in the Alpine Western Carpathians basement (CWCZ, NGZ vers. IWCZ). On the basis of sedimentary sequence analysis two zones of continental collision differing in time were established: (1) internal with termination of collision during Bretonian pre-Sudetian) events, resulting in the syn-collision Tournaisian-Visean flysch; (2) external with termination of collision during pre-Asturian events, comprising the Bashkirian, and in the innermost part of the Western Carpathians (Bukk Mountains in the northern part of Hungary) partly even the Early Moscovian flysch sequences.


Background: Sporadic Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD) is a condition predominantly affecting older age groups, with cases aged less than 45 years rare and an age at onset or death of less than 20 years exceptional. Methods: Data from the systematic study of sporadic CJD in the UK are available from 1970 onwards. Clinical and pathological data are reviewed in order to identify atypical cases, including those at the extremes of the age range of sporadic CJD. Detailed analysis of atypical cases is undertaken, and in selected cases laboratory transmission studies are carried out in order to provide information on the characteristics of the infectious agent. Results: In the UK, two cases of sporadic CJD in adolescents have been identified, dying at ages 16 and 20 years. The first case predated the epidemic of bovine spongiform encephalopathy and the characteristics of the second case, including laboratory transmission studies, are consistent with a diagnosis of sporadic rather than variant CJD. Conclusion: The cases in this report indicate that sporadic CJD can develop at a very young age, that variant CJD is not the only form of CJD occurring in this age group and that neuropathological examination is essential for accurate diagnosis of human prion disease.


In recent years, there has been an explosion of new technologies for incorporation within vehicles that are currently on the market or under development by suppliers to the automotive industry. A number of these technologies are aimed at improving safety either by reducing the risk of a crash occurring or by improving the protection offered by a vehicle in the event of a crash. But which technologies are worth backing? Which provide a strong business case to government and to the industry itself for active development, incorporation and marketing to the Australian consumer? This paper describes an analysis conducted on behalf of the Transport Accident Commission (TAC) in which a range of current and emerging in-vehicle safety technologies are assessed in accordance with a set of criteria including safety impact, cost, level of community acceptability, need for legislative or infrastructure support and the model for market penetration. Key technologies will be highlighted that score highly across these criteria as a basis for agreeing a core of technologies for subsequent support and promotion


Efforts to achieve regional economic integration are not new. The post-World War II era has witnessed the emergence and growing importance of regional economic groupings in many different parts of the world to overcome obstacles to international trade and to isolate the region from the fluctuations of the world economy. The process of regional economic cooperation was initiated by Western Europe in the late 1940s with the formation of the European Coal and Steel Community and subsequently to the Treaty of Rome in 1957 that established the European Economic Community (EEC). The formation of the EEC encouraged some other countries outside the EEC to form the European Free Trade Area (EFT A). The spectacular success of the EEC in the immediate aftermath provided an added impetus to the growing tide of regional integration. Accordingly, a large number of integration schemes, ranging from bilateral or multilateral agreements to sub-regional or regional cooperation, came into existence in different parts of the world.


The case for Performance-based Research Funding Systems (PRFS) is building as more countries adopt them to increase the performance of their research system. To date, few comparative studies have been conducted bringing together practices and experiences with this relatively new policy instrument. The PSF Mutual Learning Exercise (MLE) provided the platform for an extensive discussion on the challenges related to the design of PRFS and their position, role and value within the broader policy mix. The outcome is a comprehensive report providing insights on the advantages and drawbacks of the different options, and recommendations for an optimal PRFS design.


The surfaces of non-geniculate coralline algae (NCA) are known to induce the settlement and metamorphosis of disparate marine taxa. In this study we investigate the responsiveness of larvae of Herdmania curvata (Ascidiacea: Stolidobranchia) to three species of NCA (Neogoniolithon brassica-florida, Hydrolithon onkodes, and Lithothamnium prolifer) that cohabit the slope and crest of Heron Reef, Great Barrier Reef. H. curvata larvae were first exposed to these NCA at or within 2 h of hatching, which is 1 to 2 h prior to attaining competence, and then cultured continuously with the NCA for 12 to 14 h. Rates of settlement and metamorphosis of H. curvata cultured in laboratory chambers in the presence of the different NCA were significantly lower than spontaneous rates in seawater. The limited settlement in treatments containing NCA were confined entirely to the chamber periphery, and settlement never occurred on the surface of the NCA. The inhibitory effect was dose-dependent and was stronger in N. brassica-florida and H. onkodes than in L. prolifer. Larvae that did not settle in treatments with NCA had rounded anterior trunks and, in extreme cases, kinked tails with rounded and dissociated tail muscle cells. In some individuals, we observed the anterior chemosensory papillae being sloughed off the larval body. Morphological analysis of trunk ectodermal and mesenchymal nuclei of larvae cultured in the presence of the NCA revealed that general necrotic cell death was occurring. Importantly, H. curvata larvae that were exposed to NCA could not subsequently be induced to metamorphose in KCl-elevated seawater, whereas larvae not exposed to NCA metamorphosed at high rates in KCl-elevated seawater.


In response to new scientific developments, UNAIDS, WHO, and global health financing institutions have joined together to promote a "fast-track" global scale-up of testing and treatment programs. They have set ambitious targets toward the goal of ending the three diseases by 2030. These numerical indicators, based on infectious disease modeling, can assist in measuring countries' progressive realization of the right to health. However, they only nominally reference the catastrophic impact that human rights abuses have on access to health services; they also do not measure the positive impact provided by law reform, legal aid, and other health-related human rights programs. Drawing on experience at the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which has incorporated expanded stakeholder consultation and human rights programming into its grants, the article argues that addressing human rights barriers to access is often an ad hoc activity occurring on the sidelines of a health grantmaking process that has focused on the scale-up of biomedical programs to meet global health indicators. To ensure that these biomedical programs have impact, UN agencies and health financing mechanisms must begin to more systematically and proactively integrate human rights policy and practice into their modeling and measurement tools.


The ionosphere is a dynamic and ionized medium. Specification of the ionospheric electron density is important for radio systems operating up to a few GHz. Such systems include communication, navigation and surveillance operations. Computerized Ionospheric Tomography (CIT) is a technique that allows specification of the electron density in the ionosphere. CIT, unlike medical tomography, has geometric limitations such as uneven and sparse distribution of ground-based receivers and limited-angle observations. The inversion is therefore underdetermined and to overcome the geometric limitations of the problem, regularization techniques need to be used. In this thesis the horizontal variation of the ionosphere is represented using wavelet basis functions. Wavelets are chosen because the ground based ionospheric instrumentation is unevenly distributed and hence there is an expectation that the resolution of the tomographic image will change across a large region of interest. Wavelets are able to represent structures with different scale and position efficiently, which is known as Multi Resolution Analysis (MRA). The theory of sparse regularization allows the usage of a small number of basis functions with minimum loss of information. Furthermore, sparsity through wavelets can better differentiate between noise and actual information. This is advantageous because it increases the efficacy to resolve the structures of the ionosphere at different spatial horizontal scale sizes. The basis set is also extended to incorporate time dependence in the tomographic images by means of three-dimensional wavelets. The methods have been tested using both simulated and real observations from the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS). The simulation was necessary in order to have a controllable environment where the ability to resolve different scale structures would be tested. The further analysis of the methods required also the use of real observations. They tested the technique under conditions of temporal dynamics that would be more difficult to reproduce with simulations, which often tend to be valid in quiet ionospheric behaviors. Improvements in the detection and reconstruction of ionospheric structures were illustrated with sparse regularization. The comparison was performed against two standard methods. The first one was based on spherical harmonics in space, whilst the second relied on a time-dependent smoothing regularization. In simulation, wavelets showed the possibility to resolve small-scale structures better than spherical harmonics and illustrated the potential of creating ionospheric maps at high resolution. In reality, GNSS satellite orbits allow satellite to receiver datasets that traverse the ionosphere at a few hundred km per second and hence a long time window of typically half an hour may be required to provide observations. The assumption of an unchanging ionosphere is only valid at some locations under very quiet geomagnetic conditions and at certain times of day. For this reason the theory was extended to include time dependence in the wavelet method. This was obtained by considering two approaches: a time-smooth regularization and three-dimensional wavelets. The wavelet method was illustrated on a European dataset and demonstrated some improvements in the reconstructions of the main trough. In conclusion wavelets and sparse regularization were demonstrated to be a valid alternative to more standard methods.


Background: Displaced medial malleolus fractures require surgical repair because of the critical role the structure plays in normal joint function. Various approaches exist, but options are limited for small fragment fractures. This study compared repair with the Medial Malleolar Sled fixation system (Trimed, Inc, Valencia, CA) to lag screws in 2 modes of biomechanical loading in a cadaveric model. Methods: A Müller type B medial malleolus fracture was simulated on matched pairs of cadaveric lower extremities and repaired with the sled or 2 cancellous lag screws. Tibial distraction (tension, n = 10) or internal rotation (torsion, n = 11) was applied. Fragment movement was measured in the sagittal (tension and torsion) and transverse (torsion-only) planes. Fragment movement at 1 mm and 2 mm (clinical malunion) of gapping during tension and at 2, 4, 6, and 8 N-m during torsion was analyzed via paired t tests. Results: In tension, the load at the 2-mm gap was statistically lower for screws (P = .026). Opening angle was statistically larger for the sled at the 1-mm (P = .0004) and 2-mm (P = .008) gap. In torsion, gapping was statistically lower for the sled (ranging from P = .0013 at 4 N-m to P = .0187 at 8 N-m). No differences were detected for opening angle or transverse plane movement. Conclusion: The sled appeared stronger in tension and as effective as lag screws in torsion. The sled may be a viable option for fractures too small for 4.0- or 3.5-mm lag screws. Clinical Relevance: The sled may be suitable in applications where a tension band would normally be considered and may provide stronger fixation in osteoporotic bone compared with lag screw fixation.


Extracted from text ... BEE
evolutions
By Nicholas McDiarmid
With the announcements in August from the Ministry of Public Works regarding the extent of BEE fronting in contracts worth hundreds of millions of rand, corporate black economic empowerment (BEE) strategies are fast becoming models as opposed to simply a means to get business.
It is well known that local authorities in South Africa lack the capacity to research the BEE credentials of both their suppliers and contractors, which has left room for abuse. It was on this basis that Stella Sigcau, Minister of Public Works, called for an investigation into the BEE validity ..


John Hendrie, Barnsley's ex-manager, on Lars Leese: 'Lars Leese is a shambles. He's a loser who never achieved anything.'Dave Hill, in the Guardian, on The Keeper of Dreams: 'Leese's outsider story takes us - to the true heartbeat of our national game'At the age of 28, German goalkeeper Lars Leese was catapulted from a minor league football field somewhere near Cologne to a small industrial town in the north of England. Something of a culture shock, certainly, but nothing compared to finding himself in goal for Barnsley playing the mighty Liverpool at Anfield in front of over 45,000 spectators. Plucked from obscurity and playing in one of the most important leagues in the world, Leese experienced in real life what thousands of boys - and men - can only dream of: stepping out of the crowd and onto a Premiership pitch. Lars Leese's foray into the wild world of professional football lasted only three years, but his journey from computer software salesman to Premiership goalie is a remarkable story. Here, Ronald Reng traces his stratospheric rise and equally alarming descent: the resulting narrative is an indispensable antidote to the traditional footballing briography and a unique - and at times shocking - outsider's view of English life. Not since you last read the back pages of the News of the World will you have seen such an accurate picture of life as a Premiership footballer.'Remarkable- Provides an extraordinary snap-shot of English behaviour in a professional football dressing-room and in a Yorkshire town.' Henry Winter, Daily Telegraph


Carbonate Based Ionic Liquid Synthesis (CBILS®) is one of the most advanced commercialized processes for greener and halide-free technical synthesis of ionic liquids (ILs). To meet the increasing demand for high purity ILs, a continuous flow method with an improved space-time yield was developed. The quality of resulting ILs and IL-intermediates was confirmed to be ultra-high, by traditional analytical methods as well as by extremely sensitive combustion and solution calorimetry techniques.


We report >4.2-W mid-infrared (mid-IR) output (3.8 and 4.65 µm) and >2.1 W at 3.5 µm in ZnGeP2 (ZGP) optical parametric oscillators (OPO) pumped by a holmium-doped yttrium aluminum garnet (Ho:YAG) laser, directly pumped by a diode-pumped 1.9-µm thulium-doped yttrium lithium fluoride (Tm:YLF) laser. Optical-to-optical efficiency achieved is >7.2% (laser diode to mid-IR). In addition, a Ho:YAG-pumped ZGP OPO operation is achieved over a Ho:YAG temperature range of 80 °C at the 8-W (Ho:YAG) and 3-W (ZGP OPO) power levels.


This paper presents a novel shear-stiffened elastomer (SSE) fabricated with a mixture of silicone rubber and silicone oil. A total of four SSE samples were fabricated in this study. Their mechanical and rheological properties under both steady-state and dynamic loading conditions were tested with a parallel plate rheometer. The effects of silicone oil composition, strain amplitude and angular frequency were summarized. When raising the angular frequency in the dynamic shear test, the storage modulus of conventional silicone rubber shows a small increasing trend with the frequency. However, if silicone oil is selected to be mixed with silicone rubber, the storage modulus increases dramatically when the frequency and strain are both beyond the critical values.