Abstract Winter annual weeds protect the soil from erosion and retain nutrients during the winter; however, they can also act as a host for crop pests and pathogens and impede planting. Increased knowledge of the reproductive biology and the seed fate of winter annuals would be useful to improve management and crop productivity. The objectives of this research were to determine the recruitment biology of shepherd's-purse, henbit, common chickweed, and field pennycress, including seed production, dispersal, dormancy, and seedling emergence, based on growing degree days (GDD). Henbit was the least prolific of the four weeds studied, producing 800 to 40,000 seeds m−2 at naturally occurring densities; shepherd's-purse was the most prolific, producing 11,000 to 400,000 seeds m−2 with 40 to 230 plants m−2. Fifty percent seed rain occurred for henbit, common chickweed, shepherd's-purse, and field pennycress at 620, 790, 880, and 1300 GDDBase,0C, respectively. Overall, seeds were dormant for all species at the time of dispersal. In 2 of 3 yr, dormancy of later-dispersed common chickweed decreased after 6 mo of storage at natural, fluctuating temperatures in the absence of water. The emergence patterns of the four species followed the Gompertz equation and were indicative of facultative winter annuals. The emergence patterns by rate were similar between henbit and common chickweed and between shepherd's-purse and field pennycress. Seed production, dispersal, dormancy, and seedling emergence were influenced by moisture; therefore, including a precipitation or soil moisture component into a GDD model (such as the use of hydrothermal time) would improve the accuracy of predicting winter annual reproduction, seed fate, and emergence. Nomenclature: Common chickweed, Stellaria media (L.) Vill. STEME; field pennycress, Thlaspi arvense L. THLAR; henbit, Lamium amplexicaule L. LAMAM; Shepherd's-purse, Capsella bursa-pastoris (L.) Medik. CAPBP.


We survey directors and investors on the objectives, constraints, and determinants of CEO pay. 67% of directors would sacrifice shareholder value to avoid controversy on CEO pay, implying they face significant constraints other than participation and incentive compatibility. These constraints lead to lower pay levels and more one-size-fits-all structures. Shareholders are the main source of constraints, suggesting directors and investors disagree on how to maximize value. Respondents view intrinsic motivation and reputation as stronger motivators than incentive pay. They believe pay matters to CEOs not to finance consumption, but because it affects perceptions of fairness. The need to fairly recognize the CEO's contribution explains why flow pay responds to performance, even though CEOs' equity holdings already provide substantial consumption incentives, and why peer firm pay matters beyond retention concerns. Fairness also matters to investors, with shareholder returns an important reference point. This causes CEO pay to be affected by external risks, in contrast to optimal risk sharing.


: With the rapid development of deep learning, neural network and deep learning algorithms play a significant role in various practical applications. Especially, the high accuracy and good performance of CNNs has become a research hot spot in research organizations for the past few years. However, the size of the networks becomes increasingly large scale due to the demands of the practical applications, which poses a significant challenge to construct a high-performance implementation of deep learning neural networks. Meanwhile, many of these application scenarios also have strict requirements on the performance and low-power consumption of hardware devices. Therefore, it is particularly critical to choose a moderate computing platform for hardware acceleration of CNNs. This article is aimed to survey the recent advance in FPGA-based acceleration of CNNs. Various designs and implementations of the accelerator based on FPGA under different devices and network models are overviewed, and the versions of GPUs, ASICs and DSPs are compared, which is to present our own critical analysis and comments. Finally, we give a discussion on different perspectives of these acceleration and optimization methods on FPGA platforms and to further explore the opportunities and challenges for future research. More helpfully, we give a prospect for future development of FPGA-based accelerator.


Many real programs are written in multiple different programming languages, and supporting this pattern creates challenges for formal compiler verification. We describe our Coq verification of a compiler for a high-level language, such that the compiler correctness theorem allows us to derive partial-correctness Hoare-logic theorems for programs built by linking the assembly code output by our compiler and assembly code produced by other means. Our compiler supports such tricky features as storable cross-language function pointers, without giving up the usual benefits of being able to verify different compiler phases (including, in our case, two classic optimizations) independently. The key technical innovation is a mixed operational and axiomatic semantics for the source language, with a built-in notion of abstract data types, such that compiled code interfaces with other languages only through axiomatically specified methods that mutate encapsulated private data, represented in whatever formats are most natural for those languages.


Socially Responsible Territories as spatial strategy of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) are being developed in different parts of Colombia. In the case of Northern Cauca Region emerges as an initiative of entrepreneurs with the aim of responding to local needs and bet on the construction of a process of social intervention in the framework of a regional development agenda, including the prospect of multiple actors and entrepreneurs settled zones in the area, local governments, academia and representatives of the community. This reflection article aims to describe the process of collective construction of the Socially Responsible Territory of Northern Cauca. It comes in three parts: the first describes the main conceptual references about Corporate Social Responsibility and Socially Responsible Region. The second part outlines the main features of the area of northern Cauca and the context of implementing the strategy. In the last part presents the strategy Socially Responsible Region in Northern Cauca, the milestones of the process of coordination of actors that has allowed the formation of the strategy and present some preliminary thoughts and findings on the learning achieved at this stage of the process.


In this paper we present a new technique for modeling Artificial Creativity in Evolutionary Music (EM) systems and predicting how appealing musical pieces are to human listeners. We use a k-Nearest Neighbor classifier where we approximate the Information Distance between the new, unclassified, musical piece and a corpus of observed musical pieces rated by the user with the Universal Similarity Metric. We approximate the Information Distance with two different methods, using standard binary compression of MIDI files, and using MP3 encoding of raw audio streams. Our experiments indicate that the universal similarity metric can be used to discriminate between music that do and do not appeal to human listeners. Even though classification results is not perfect, it performs significantly better than the random baseline and when we combine the predictions made independently by the MIDI and MP3 classifiers, we obtain an even higher classification accuracy, ranging up to 77% on the test set. These results is in the same range as our results in predicting the aesthetic value of visual art, which indicates that the Universal Similarity Metric is a very general and versatile approach to modeling Artificial Creativity.


Historical censuses are on the most consulted, reliable and large scale statistical data sources available which give an insight in the population characteristics of a nation: they provide a wealth of data on many issues in the course of time at the demographic, social and economic level. In the Netherlands, the digitization of the Dutch historical censuses (1795-1971) has resulted in many dispersed tables, and meaningful historical information is currently hidden in aggregated data over 2,300 of these tables. In order to fully reap the benefits of this dataset temporal comparisons are required. However, the Dutch historical censuses are still very difficult to compare, aggregate and query in a uniform fashion due to the lack of data harmonization. The CEDAR project of the Computational Humanities Programme aims at enabling greater access and use of this dataset by applying a specific datamodel (exploiting the Resource Description Framework RDF technology), to create Linked Census Data and make it interlinkable with other hubs of historical socioeconomic and demographic information; and various harmonization practices. The process of harmonization is currently an ongoing process and will be so in the future. In order to implement harmonization on this dataset we have applied a three tier model, distinguishing between the raw data layer (containing a direct translation of the numbers and concepts in the tables), the annotations layer (with corrections and comments from the dataset curators), and the harmonization layer (linking and standardizing heterogeneous census entities). Making extensive use of semantic technologies and Linked Data principles, we make this Linked Census Data comparable over time by leveraging specific data classifications, taxonomies and ontologies. By querying these, we create visualizations in order to explore the thousands of variables and to get an early understanding of our data and its relations. We create bottom up classifications for information contained in all three census types (population, houses and occupations) like demographical structures, housing types, occupational classes and statuses, religious denominations, and so on. We use animation techniques to display the conceptual changes that modified the social landscape in fundamental centuries of Europe's history.


My thesis offers a study of a collection of sermons for Sundays attributed to John
Waldeby, an Austin Friar who was active in the city of York in the fourteenth century.
By adopting the vertical approach of investigating a single medieval sermon collection
in its entirety, it provides an insight into the preaching-support system of the mendicant
friars and into different phases from the composition of the work to reception, in terms
of both the use of the manuscripts by readers and the way the audience would have
understood the sermons when they were preached.
This thesis is divided into two major parts, each containing three chapters: the
first part concerns the setting in which Waldeby's collection, the Novum opus
dominicale, was written and used; the second part constitutes an analysis of the
sermons in the work. Chapter 1 deals with the biography of Waldeby and sets out the
basic information concerning the Novum opus dominicale. Chapter 2 identifies the
proximate recipients of the work-the `youths' (iuuenes) assigned to Waldeby-and
the wider lay audience, and examines various aspects of the training and education of
friars within the Augustinian order. Through a close examination of the library
catalogue of the York convent and the sources used in the Novum opus dominicale,
Chapter 3 uncovers the existence of a reference book collection and describes the
overall organisation of the library collection. Waldeby's collection emerges as the key
text in the library, which was the material basis for the fundamental training of the
friars and for supporting sermon composition. Chapter 4, the first chapter of Part II,
extensively explores the form of Waldeby's sermons by a close comparative reading
alongside Robert of Basevotn's Forma praedicandi. It reveals not only the intricacies
of the techniques involved in the composition of `modern' sermons, but also elements
of the mindset of preachers such as Waldeby. Chapter 5 focuses on the word `sign'
(signum) which often appears in Waldeby's collection. The concept of sign plays a
crucial role in both the mental framework through which he interpreted the Bible and
the world, and the method by which he communicated his message to his audiences.
The final chapter examines the overall design of the Novum opus dominicale in the
broader perspective of de tempore collections. This study is accompanied by a critical
transcription of one of the sermons of the Novum opus dominicale.


All children learn from conversational input, including children who have simultaneous or successive acquisition of several languages in childhood. Partners who stimulate speech by asking questions, responding, and expanding a child's utterances can accelerate learning at all levels of language, in addition to scaffolding the development of speech acts, speech events, social styles and appropriate code-switching. In family bilingualism with a person dichotomy, the frequency of conversation and the instructional style of each parent can affect the rate of acquisition. Bilingualism in minority languages is most successful when parents maintain a language different from the community, so there is a place dichotomy. Children whose second language is acquired in school can become fully bilingual but there is wide variation in acquisition time.


An almost obsessional use of numbers characterizes Japanese popular culture. A wide variety of numerical formulae and strategies provide the means for explaining events and solving problems occurring in everyday life. These include such matters as the choice of the name for a child, ranking in almost any game or sport, the diagnosis and cure of illness or the decision to accept a new job. This text provides a general study of the field of Japanese popular numeracy. It introduces the reader to a world of numbers in which fortune-telling, the abacus and games involving numbers, as well as curious numerical names (of both people and places), illustrate the importance of systems of counting, calculation and forecasting. The study explores the cultural roots of attitudes towards numbers and makes suggestions about the contemporary implications of a culture in which mechanical numeracy (and number obsession) is general but the highest levels of academic mathematics still fall short of world standards.


Knowledge is an essential source of competitive advantage in modern society and is particularly important in the current on-line environment due to increased business interactions throughout the world. Knowledge sharing initiatives taken by organisations to improve technicalities to tackle cyber threat have been extensively investigated. A particular focus of this study was on the security professionals sharing their learning experience in order to help address and mitigate identity theft. Multiple case studies were employed to interpret the triangulated data collected. ShoppingCo, PaymentCo, TeleCo, and NetworkingCo participated in this investigation. Semi structured interviews were scheduled and conducted in conjunction to company reports, personal communication, presentation slides and related materials was gathered to ensure trustworthiness and authenticity. Pattern matching analysis was employed to draw conclusions by evaluating 30 transcripts and 11 internal documents.

The major theoretical contribution of this study was the proposal of a conceptual framework that adapts for private sector organisations knowledge sharing elements in the security profession. Lack of knowledge of the manager's role is addressed. Current knowledge sharing and corporate communication practices are synthesised. Formal and informal communication, social forums and networking events are evaluated. Thus, improving the current understanding of identity theft.

This empirical study contributes to an improved understanding of inter-organisational knowledge sharing practice within three retailers and an official networking forum. Because of this evaluation, an extended framework is proposed and components synthesised into a new framework. Recommendations are drawn based on an evaluation of what is working and what does not seem to be providing benefits with regard to knowledge that address and mitigate identity theft. The framework suggested that the key to improved knowledge sharing was to persuade a range of security officials working for different private sector organisations to share their knowledge of identity theft prevention.


Despite the enactment of the Equal Pay Act (EPA) almost 50 years ago, the pay gap between men and women stubbornly persists. While the pay gap can be attributed to many causes, one of the primary causes explored here is courts' willingness to allow employers to use "market excuses" to defend pay discrimination suits under the EPA's fourth affirmative defense. The market excuses we refer to occur when employers defend their decisions to pay a man more than a woman doing equal work because of an applicant's prior salary, an outside competitive offer given to an employee, or the fact that a man negotiated for more pay. Employers defend these cases by arguing that the pay differential is not based on sex; it is based on the market, which is alleged to be neutral. This Article argues that the market is not neutral but is instead tainted with gender bias. Relying on the social science literature, we demonstrate that unconscious discrimination causes employers to value men more than women and also influences how women value themselves. Both of these phenomena cause pay bias to perpetuate. The recently defeated bill, the Paycheck Fairness Act (PFA), had the potential to foreclose employers' reliance on market excuses because it would require employers to prove that the factor causing the pay disparity between a man and a woman performing equal work is "job related" and "consistent with business necessity." Despite the failure of the PFA, we continue to believe it has great potential to not only minimize the use of market excuses but also to clarify and reinforce the EPA's strict liability framework, which will hopefully revive the suffering statute. Perhaps a modified PFA – one that maintains the important revisions to the fourth affirmative defense but modifies the highly criticized damages provision – will bring us one step closer to ending the pay gap.


Elections matter in democratic societies. They not only decide who will govern, but they can also reveal, beneath the surface, other important pieces of information about political life. Behind the aggregate total of votes received by each party lies a puzzle: where do the votes come from? The social profile of party electoral coalitions is important because once in power, parties tend to reward their most important supporters. As these profiles change, whether as a result of demographic shifts, declining rates of political participation, or changes in voting behavior, influences on the policies of democratically elected governments change as well. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The study of the "social" bases of voting behavior (and how they change over time) has been an important part of the tradition of voting studies. It is also a central focus of political strategists and campaign managers seeking to maximize candidate and party vote shares. In this essay, we discuss some of the most important changes in voting demographics. To keep the discussion manageable, our focus is on the established "rich" democracies of Western Europe and North America, although many of the same. points could be made about some of the newer democracies in Eastern Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Elections in the rich democracies during the first three-quarters of the 20th century were defined by fairly stable group-based alignments. Historically, the two most important of these were those based on religion and class, with religion as a generally stronger predictor of voting-behavior. More recently, a gender cleavage has opened up in many countries, with women shifting in significant numbers towards center-left parties. In some places, other.group-based alignments--such as those along linguistic, regional, or racial lines--have also been important, although these have varied from country to country and have not lent themselves to broad generalizations. In the United States, for example, African-American voters have been overwhelmingly Democratic since the early 1960s, representing perhaps the single strongest social group alignment in any of the rich democracies today. Regional and linguistic divides in countries like Canada or Belgium can play an important role. And rising rates of immigration are becoming increasingly significant, especially in countries where immigrants or their children can gain citizenship rights. The classical theory of group alignments holds that once a group comes to be politically aligned in the party system, that alignment tends to endure and reproduce itself. The logic is that party leaders and candidates make similar group-based appeals and policy commitments at each election that are sufficient to "remind" voters of their usual preferences. But these evidently "settled" questions have become deeply unsettled in recent years. Understanding what these changes are, and how they are impacting elections and a the party systems of democratic polities, is a complicated challenge for scholars, political commentators, and party-strategists alike. We think the best way to unpack this puzzle is by returning to the question posed at the beginning of this essay: where do the votes come from? This in turn can be broken down into three smaller questions: (1) who votes? (2) how are important social groups aligned with parties? and (3) how has the size of key groups (and how they change over time) impacted parties and elections? Who Votes? In many rich democracies, turnout in national elections is high (80 percent or more). When turnout is very high, turnout rates among groups do not vary much. But it has long been understood that in elections in which turnout is far from universal, resource-rich groups vote at higher rates than more disadvantaged groups. For example, in the United States, where turnout rates in presidential elections have been between 55 percent and 60 percent in recent elections, there is typically a large turnout gap (25 percent or more) between the highest turnout group within a social cleavage category and the lowest (e. …


Drying trials were conducted using two species of plantation grown eucalypt timbers: 19-year-old Eucalyptus cloeziana (Gympie messmate) and 15-year-old Eucalyptus pellita (red mahogany). The objective of this study was to gain an understanding of the drying potential of young plantation grown material using accelerated seasoning methods, a process expected to be critcal to the success of plantation hardwood products entering value added markets.

The findings are encouraging, indicating that both species can be dried using conventional drying techniques much faster than industry is currently achieving when drying native forest timber. The results suggest that there is a definite drying time advantatge in vacuum drying over conventional methods for 19-year-old E. cloeziana. The findings have shown that through careful schedule manipulation and adjustment, the grade quality can be optimised to suit the desired expectation. As this study was limited to only a small number of trials, time and quality improvements are expected to be realised for both conventional and vacuum drying methods as more research is conducted.


This paper represents an application of the so-called evaluative or performance-approach to the analysis of a regulated sector as public transport. The aim of this work is to provide more information to the debate on the privatization programmes. A translog cost function for a five- year panel is estimated and measures of economies of scale and density are derived. Indeed, from the derived cost-efficiency frontier evidence for scale inefficiency and overall cost inefficiency can be noted for 40 regional bus companies in Emilia Romagna. The estimation results allow for a discussion of inefficiency in terms of sub-optimal scale and density. Overall cost inefficiency is estimated by means of a frontier cost function. The findings emphasize strong evidence for merger policies because of too little size of actual operators and non significant difference in cost-efficiency between public and private enterprises operating in a strongly regulated sector.


Eighty agricultural topsoil samples were collected near the Three Gorges Dam region of Yangtze River, China, to investigate concentrations, distribution patterns, and possible sources and potential cancer risks of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in this area. Total PAHs concentrations in agricultural top-soil ranged from 277.79 to 3,217.20 ng g−1 (ppb) with a mean concentration of 1,023.48 ± 815.31 ng g−1. Total concentrations of seven carcinogenic PAHs (C-PAHs) were between 45.85 ng g−1 and 1,147.45 ng g−1, accounting for 6% to 49% of the total PAHs. Total PCBs concentrations varied from 18.56 to 183.90 ng g−1 with a mean concentration of 35.28 ± 41.01 ng g−1. Positive linear correlations were found between total PAHs and total PCBs, showing these compounds may originate from common sources. Isomer ratios analysis indicated that atmospheric deposition was the main common source for PAHs and PCBs. The incremental lifetime cancer risk (ILCR) of PCBs in agricultural topsoil near the Three Gorges Dam region were all below 10−6, indicating no cancer risk, whereas ILCR of PAHs were between 10−6 and 10−4; special attention needs to be paid to PAHs in the study area.


In the wake of BSE, the threat to ban fox hunting and Foot and Mouth disease, the English countryside appears to be in turmoil. Long-standing uses of rural space are in crisis and, unsurprisingly, political processes in rural areas are marked by conflicts between groups, such as farmers, environmentalists, developers and local residents.
Using an innovative theoretical approach based on 'networks of conventions', this book investigates the 'regionalisation' of the English countryside through a series of case-studies. These studies are based on a set of 'ideal types': 'the preserved' countryside, where environmental pressures are strongly expressed; the 'contested' countryside, where development processes are shaped by disputes between agrarian and environmental interests; and the 'paternalistic' countryside, where large landowners continue to oversee patterns of land development. It looks in detail at landowners, residents, politicians, planners, farmers, and environmentalists and shows how these groups compete.
The Differentiated Countryside argues that the countryside is increasingly governed by regional policies. It becomes hard to discern a single English countryside; we see the emergence of multiple countrysides, places where diverse modes of identity are expressed and differing forms of development take place. Such diversity, it is argued, now lies at the heart of rural England.


Antigen receptors (BCRs) on developing B lymphocytes play two opposing roles-promoting survival of cells that may later bind a foreign antigen and inhibiting survival of cells that bind too strongly to self-antigens. It is not known how these opposing outcomes are signaled by BCRs on immature B cells. Here we analyze the effect of a null mutation in the Syk tyrosine kinase on maturing B cells displaying a transgene-encoded BCR that binds hen egg lysozyme (HEL). In the absence of HEL antigen, HEL-specific BCRs are expressed normally on the surface of Syk-deficient immature B-lineage cells, but this fails to promote maturation beyond the earliest stages of B-lineage commitment. Binding of HEL antigen, nevertheless, triggers phosphorylation of CD79alpha/beta BCR subunits and modulation of receptors from the surface in Syk-deficient cells, but it cannot induce an intracellular calcium response. Continuous binding of low- or high-avidity forms of HEL, expressed as self-antigens, fails to restore the signal needed for maturation. Compared with the effects in the same system of null mutations in other BCR signaling elements, such as CD45 and Lyn kinase, these results indicate that Syk is essential for transmitting a signal that initiates the program of B-lymphocyte maturation.


Purpose: To report a patient with Urrets-Zavalia (U-Z) syndrome after penetrating keratoplasty (PKP) in both eyes Case report: A 22-year-old woman with keratoconus associated with a central full thickness scar in both eyes underwent PKP in her right eye that was postoperatively associated with a fixed dilated pupil and severe fibrin reaction, posterior synechiae and mild anterior sub capsular cataract. However he developed fixed dilated pupil leading to posterior synechiae after PKP in the second eye. Conclusion: This case shows an intrinsic susceptibility for U-Z syndrome which alerts surgeons in the case of second eye surgery.


In modern jurisprudence it is taken as axiomatic that John Austin's sanction-based account of law and legal obligation was demolished in H.L.A. Hart's The Concept of Law, but Hart's victory and the deficiencies of the Austinian account may not be so clear. Not only does the alleged linguistic distinction between being obliged and having an obligation fail to provide as much support for the idea of a sanction-independent legal obligation as is commonly thought, but the soundness of Hart's claims, as well as the claims of many legal theorists who have followed him, depend on a contested view of the nature of legal theory. If the task of a theory of law, as Joseph Raz and others have influentially argued, is to identify the essential features of the concept of law, then the theoretical possibility, if not the empirical reality, of a sanction-free legal system is what is most important. But if the task of a theory of law is to provide philosophical and theoretical illumination of law as it exists and as it is experienced, then a theory of law that fails to give a central place to law's coercive reality may for that reason be deficient as a theory of law. The question of the soundness of the Austinian account, therefore, may be a function of the answer to the question of what a theory of law is designed to accomplish.


Triboelectric generators have emerged as potential candidates for mechanical energy harvesting, relying on motion-generated surface charge transfer between materials with different electron affinities. In this regard, synthetic organic materials with strong electron-donating tendencies are far less common than their electron-accepting counterparts. Nylons are notable exceptions, with odd-numbered Nylons such as Nylon-11, exhibiting electric polarisation that could further enhance the surface charge density crucial to triboelectric generator performance. However, the fabrication of Nylon-11 in the required polarised δ′-phase typically requires extremely rapid crystallisation, such as melt-quenching, as well as "poling" via mechanical stretching and/or large electric fields for dipolar alignment. Here, we propose an alternative one-step, near room-temperature fabrication method, namely gas-flow assisted nano-template (GANT) infiltration, by which highly crystalline "self-poled" δ′-phase Nylon-11 nanowires are grown from solution within nanoporous anodised aluminium oxide (AAO) templates. Our gas-flow assisted method allows for controlled crystallisation of the δ′-phase of Nylon-11 through rapid solvent evaporation and an artificially generated extreme temperature gradient within the nanopores of the AAO template, as accurately predicted by finite-element simulations. Furthermore, preferential crystal orientation originating from template-induced nano-confinement effects leads to self-poled δ′-phase Nylon-11 nanowires with higher surface charge distribution than melt-quenched Nylon-11 films, as observed by Kelvin probe force microscopy (KPFM). Correspondingly, a triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) device based on as-grown templated Nylon-11 nanowires fabricated via GANT infiltration showed a ten-fold increase in output power density as compared to an aluminium-based triboelectric generator, when subjected to identical mechanical excitations.


Despite the effectiveness of sequence-to-sequence framework on the task of Short-Text Conversation (STC), the issue of under-exploitation of training data (i.e., the supervision signals from query text is ignored) still remains unresolved. Also, the adopted maximization-based decoding strategies, inclined to generating the generic responses or responses with repetition, are unsuited to the STC task. In this paper, we propose to formulate the STC task as a language modeling problem and tailor-make a training strategy to adapt a language model for response generation. To enhance generation performance, we design a relevance-promoting transformer language model, which performs additional supervised source attention after the self-attention to increase the importance of informative query tokens in calculating the token-level representation. The model further refines the query representation with relevance clues inferred from its multiple references during training. In testing, we adopt a randomization-over-maximization strategy to reduce the generation of generic responses. Experimental results on a large Chinese STC dataset demonstrate the superiority of the proposed model on relevance metrics and diversity metrics.1


The titania that was prepared as a packing material in our laboratory, which changed its color on heating, microwave irradiation, and heating under vacuum during nitrogen adsorption. We assumed that the compound adsorbed on titania was oxidized or oxidatively polymerized on heating, leading to the color change. The color faded on heating the sample at 270°C. The catalytic ability of titania is assumed to accelerate its coloration and decoloration. We demonstrated the catalytic ability of titania using glycerol as an adsorbate; silica gel was used as an adsorbent for comparison with titania. Titania accelerated the oxidation or oxidative polymerization of the adsorbate and the decomposition of the oxidized or polymeric compound obtained. Furthermore, the catalysis of titania led to the modification of its surface by adsorbate oxidation or oxidative polymerization; also, surface modification was demonstrated by using glycerol as the adsorbate. Two different modified titania were prepared as packing material by heating the mixture of titania and glycerol at 120°C and 200°C for up to 2 h after coloration. The retention behavior of purine, allopurinol, hypoxanthine, and oxypurinol on these two modified titania and non-modified one was investigated. Oxypurinol eluted faster than hypoxanthine on titania modified at 120°C although it was more strongly retained on non-modified titania than hypoxanthine. Thus, the retention site of oxypurinol is similar to that of glycerol on non-modified titania, that is, the surface modification by glycerol oxidation or oxidative polymerization blocked the site and accelerated its elution. The results could be used for explaining not only the modification of the surface but also the retention mechanism on titania.


This paper presents systematic techniques to find low-power high-performance superscalar processors tailored to specific user applications. The model of power is novel because it separates power into architectural and technology components. The architectural component is found via trace-driven simulation, which also produces performance estimates. An example technology model is presented that estimates the technology component, along with critical delay time and real estate usage. This model is based on case studies of actual designs. It is used to solve an important problem: decreasing power consumption in a superscalar processor without greatly impacting performance. Results are presented from runs using simulated annealing to reduce power consumption subject to performance reduction bounds. The major contributions of this paper are the separation of architectural and technology components of dynamic power the use of trace-driven simulation for architectural power measurement, and the use of a near-optimal search to tailor a processor design to a benchmark.


Previous studies on the personality of bullies and targets have exclusively been based on self-report. Against this backdrop we conducted a between group experimental vignette study with three conditions, describing a bully, a target and a control, respectively. Students (n = 242) were recruited as participants and rated the target on the observer rating version of the NEO Five Factor Inventory-Revised reflecting the personality dimensions Neuroticism, Extroversion, Openness to experience, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness. A MANOVA showed an overall significant effect of the experimental conditions. On Neuroticism significant differences between all conditions were found with targets rated highest and the control lowest. In terms of Extroversion the target was rated as lower than the control and the bully. No main effect was found for Openness. On Agreeableness the bully was rated as lower than both the target and the control. The bully was rated lower on Conscientiousness than the control. The significant differences reflected medium to large effect sizes. By and large the results are in agreement with comparable self-report data. The results are discussed in terms of practical implications and directions for future research are outlined.


A reflection-based thru-less de-embedding technique for voltage and current waveforms and absolute power flow measurements suitable for on-wafer large-signal characterisation of microwave transistors is proposed. Based on the novel calibration technique developed, which does not require any special `golden standard` for waveform calibration purposes, a comprehensive and relatively inexpensive power flow, impedance and waveform measurement system, using the microwave transition analyser as a two-channel receiver, is developed. The proposed calibration algorithm is fast, simple and accurate for power de-embedding and waveform measurements. This kind of on-wafer power de-embedding and waveform measurement is helpful in the design of switching-mode power amplifiers. The developed system was tested for both 50Ω and non-50Ω terminated passive and active devices, and the obtained results show very good agreement with those obtained with commercial instruments.


From January 2005, the Saatchi Gallery will hold a landmark exhibition in three parts, lasting the whole year, devoted entirely to painting. The title refers to the primacy of painting at the root of artistic expression. The exhibition will open with the work of five of the greatest modern European painters: Peter Doig, Marlene Dumas, Luc Tuymans, Jorg Immendorf and the late Martin Kippenberger. The Belgian painter, Tuymans, has been the subject of a major exhibition at Tate Modern in 2004. These painters are regarded as the most influential figures at this time. Their work will fill the entire gallery. They will be followed by a show of a new generation of painters including a number of British artists such as Cecily Brown, Jenny Saville, Gary Hume, Chris Ofili and Dexter Dalwood. The final part of the show will be held in the latter part of 2005 and will consist entirely of the work of new young painters. Following the success of 100, which was published for the opening of the Saatchi Gallery last year, The Triumph of Painting, which comes in a much larger format, should stand as the definitive book of current art with resonance beyond the walls of the gallery itself. This project will mark the return of the Saatchi Gallery into focus following the tragic loss of key works in the Saatchi collection in the fire of last year.


Summary The essence of modern medical education lies in the ability of defining and developing its terminology, which all too often is used in a less than thoughtful and inappropriate manner. Educationalists place emphasis upon the concept of learning rather than teaching; learning which is specifically student centred and student directed learning rather than teacher centred didactic teaching. However within this change environment we still prefer to use the word training, as in vocational training, to describe a specific programme and aspire to levels of competency that hopefully match the learning outcomes of the programme. This article opens the debate on whether the satisfactory completion of a learning programme is sufficient (cf completion of vocational training) or whether we should be assessing the learner through levels of defined competency relevant to their professional career. "Personally I am always ready to learn, although I do not always like to be taught" Sir Winston Churchill.


ABSTRACT Land use regulations in Switzerland do not meet the requirements of the spatial planning act (SPA) in their guidance for parsimonious land use. If parsimonious land use is to be achieved, urban economic theories and price-based regulations must be leveraged to determine the intensity and balance of land use. Therefore, an urban information system to project and guide for parsimonious land use was developed. The GIS spatial analysis instrument presented in this paper is intended as a decision-making aid in the reform of the land use regulations, in particular metropolitan, cantonal and regional structure plans and municipal land use plans. By intensifying and better balancing land use at locations adequately accessed by public transport, land can be used parsimoniously. However, the projection results are not a self-fulfilling prophecy. Therefore, to guide for parsimonious land use regulations need to change from normative, static and exclusionary to context-dependent, conditional, dynamic and inclusionary ones. The next step is to develop a system of fees and codes to internalize negative externalities of building and transport and to collect public revenue from economic and agglomeration rents.


In Land Use Planning and the Environment, the authors have dramatically revised and updated a classic, seminal casebook, Land-Use Planning. Designed primarily for the classroom, the book takes a comprehensive approach to the teaching of planning and zoning law, regulatory takings, and environmental topics. Throughout the casebook, the authors identify and explore intersections between land use planning law and environmental regulation. They also identify the hidden environmental "agenda" behind exclusionary zoning, the impact of urban sprawl on clean air and critical habitats, and other interconnections. Professors, students, and law and planning practitioners with strong backgrounds and exposure to "traditional" environmental law will find these intersections a wonderful opportunity to examine familiar topics from a fresh perspective. For other users, Land Use Planning and the Environment will serve as a valuable introduction to the environmental realm, a realm that, more than perhaps any other in American law, is subject to swift and dramatic changes that require the most current teaching materials.


Abstract: Subcutaneous fat necrosis (SFN) of the newborn is uncommon and usually occurs in the first weeks of life following a complicated delivery. The frequency with which hypercalcemia develops as a complication is uncertain. We report the clinical features of SFN in 11 patients seen between 1991 and 1998. Ten were born by cesarean section and fetal distress was present in the majority. It was not possible to distinguish SFN from sclerema neonatorum by time of onset or related infant diseases. Hypercalcemia developed in four infants up to 7 weeks after the onset of SFN. Infants with this condition should be carefully monitored for hypercalcemia.


California has committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) to address climate change. But in California, the sector that produces the largest share of greenhouse gas emissions is transportation, and reducing those emissions depends on reducing total vehicle miles traveled (VMT). And that, in turn requires rebuilding urban and suburban areas in California to become less car-centered and more oriented around mass-transit and walkable neighborhoods: transit-oriented infill development (TOD). Critiques of the transition from sprawl to TOD raise concerns that TOD is pushing low-income communities out of our urban core and into to exurban areas. A key question is the role of local versus state control over land use in addressing the dual challenges of climate change and the state's housing crisis. To address this debate, we built a first-of-its-kind data set that examines entitlement, or the local approval process to obtain a building permit, in relationship to present day zoning as well as historical discriminatory land use policy. We find that local government choices about zoning reflect past racial discrimination around land use, directing dense TOD almost entirely into neighborhoods that were subject to those discriminatory practices.


The magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) findings of presumed cerebrovascular accident in 12 dogs are described. Fourteen lesions were seen, commonly (11 of 14) within the gray matter of the cerebellar hemispheres or vermis. Thirteen lesions were hyperintense on T2-weighted images (in 11 dogs) and one was hypointense. Eleven of 14 lesions were within the region supplied by the rostral cerebellar artery or one of its main branches and there was no, or minimal, mass effect. Contrast enhancement was only seen in six lesions and was mild in all. Gradient-echo images provided additional information in two dogs. The appearance of infarction in dogs with diffusion-weighted images (DWI) is similar to that in humans, and provided supportive evidence for the diagnosis of infarction in five dogs. The use of gradient-echo and DWI is recommended for the evaluation of suspected cerebrovascular accidents in dogs. Six of the 12 affected animals were spaniels or spaniel crosses, suggesting a possible breed predisposition.


Preconditioned gradient methods are among the most general and powerful tools in optimization. However, preconditioning requires storing and manipulating prohibitively large matrices. We describe and analyze a new structure-aware preconditioning algorithm, called Shampoo, for stochastic optimization over tensor spaces. Shampoo maintains a set of preconditioning matrices, each of which operates on a single dimension, contracting over the remaining dimensions. We establish convergence guarantees in the stochastic convex setting, the proof of which builds upon matrix trace inequalities. Our experiments with state-of-the-art deep learning models show that Shampoo is capable of converging considerably faster than commonly used optimizers. Although it involves a more complex update rule, Shampoo's runtime per step is comparable to that of simple gradient methods such as SGD, AdaGrad, and Adam.


The real exchange rate (RER) has been called the single most important price, yet its behavior exhibits several puzzles. In this project, we use Big Mac prices as a unique prism to study the movement of real exchange rates. Part of our innovation is to match these prices to the prices of individual ingredients. There are a number of advantages associated with our approach. First, unlike the CPI RER, we can measure the Big Mac RER in levels. Second, unlike the CPI RER, for which the attribution to tradable and non-tradable components involves assumptions on the weights and the functional form, we (almost) know the exact composition of a Big Mac, and can estimate the tradable and non-tradable components relatively precisely. Third, we can study the dynamics of the RER in a setting free of: the product-aggregation bias, the temporal aggregation bias, and the bias generated by non-compatible consumption baskets across countries. Fourth that Engel's result that deviations from the law of one price are sole explanation for RER movements does not hold generally. We offer some evidence that departure from the Engel effect can be systematically linked to economic factors.


Antibodies, found in human sera from patients with poststreptococcal glomerulonephritis, against proteoglycans (PG) derived from bovine and human glomeruli were investigated. PG were isolated by 4 M guanidine- HCl extraction of whole glomeruli, followed by DEAE-Sepharose CL-6B ion exchange chromatography. The anionic fractions were further purified by chromatography on Sepharose CL-4B. Biochemical analysis of the two resulting peaks revealed the presence of high molecular weight anionic material containing protein, uronic acid, glucosamine, and galactosamine. Enzymatic and chemical susceptibilities indicated the presence of heparan sulfate PG and a galactosamine-containing PG. Immunologic studies revealed the presence of anti-PG antibodies to both PG peaks of the Sepharose CL-4B column in glomerulonephritis sera. Inhibition studies using an ELISA demonstrated that heparan sulfate was a major antigenic determinant. Cross-reactivity with both mammalian and streptococcal hyaluronate was noted. Inhibition studies also indicated the presence of a second antigenic site containing N- acetylgalactosamine, possibly representing chondroitin or dermatan sulfate PG.


A collection of essays on books and why they matter by the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer of THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY and WONDER BOYS. MAPS AND LEGENDS is a love song in sixteen parts - a series of linked essays in praise of reading and writing, with subjects running from ghost stories to comic books, Sherlock Holmes to Cormac McCarthy. Throughout, Chabon energetically argues for a return to the thrilling, chilling origins of storytelling, rejecting the false walls around 'serious' literature in favour of a wide-ranging affection. His own fiction, meanwhile, is explored from the perspective of personal history: post-collegiate desperation sparks his debut, THE MYSTERIES OF PITTSBURGH; procrastination and doubt reveal the way towards WONDER BOYS; a love of comics and a basement golem combine to create the Pulitzer Prize-winning THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY; and an enigmatic Yiddish phrasebook unfurls into THE YIDDISH POLICEMEN'S UNION.


This review investigates the potential implications of Putnam's recent book Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis for the field of social sport sciences. The main themes in Putnam's Our Kids are class segregation and the widening 'opportunity' gap between the 'have' and 'have nots' in American society. The question can and needs to be asked: what the impact of class-based segregation has been on 'our sport clubs'? Furthermore, Putnam also discusses the importance and unequal provision of Extracurricular activities. Putnam sees such activities as contexts for developing social skills, a sense of civic engagement and even for generating upward mobility. An important advantage of such activities is, according to Putnam, the exposure to caring adults outside the family, who can often serve as valuable mentors. However, throughout the book, Putnam uses a rather judgmental and moralizing language when talking about the parents of the 'have nots'. The lesson that sport researchers can learn from this is to be sensitive and critical to moralizing approaches and deficiency discourses regarding the inclusion in and through sport of children and youth living in poverty.


In contrast to the production of simple bulk chemicals and polymers, which started shortly after the discovery of the "olefin scrambling" reaction, it was not until much later that this transformation was "rediscovered" by the academic world. In the last decade of the 20th century, the so-called olefin metathesis reaction gained real significance in advanced organic synthesis [1]. The development of well-defined catalysts and an understanding of the reaction mechanism prompted an extraordinary scientific turnaround, revolutionizing retro-synthetic planning in total synthesis groups and in medicinal chemistry R&D laboratories around the world. The importance of "the development of the metathesis method in organic synthesis" has been fully recognized by the award of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2005 jointly to Yves Chauvin, Robert H. Grubbs, and Richard R. Schrock [2].

Organic chemists are now provided with molybdenum and ruthenium complexes that present good application profiles for a range of metathesis reactions. Most of the ruthenium initiators can be handled in air and are compatible with functionalized substrates, such as unsaturated esters, amides, ketones, aldehydes and even alkenes bearing protic functions, e.g., hydroxy or carboxylic acid groups. While more sensitive towards air and moisture, molybdenum catalysts provide excellent results in stereoselective metathesis and are sometimes more active. Therefore these catalyst families can be used in a complementary fashion. Currently, olefin metathesis (and its sister reaction, alkyne metathesis) [3] is one of the most intensively studied transformations in synthetic organic chemistry, as witnessed by a veritable "explosion" in the number of published syntheses where metathesis is the key step. Despite its power and applicability, metathesis is still experiencing some growing pains outside academic laboratories and the industrial production of simple chemicals. It is surprising that while this transformation has been used in laboratory scale syntheses of thousands of natural and biologically active compounds, it has not yet entered commercial pharmaceutical manufacturing. This could be due to a variety of reasons, such as the still not perfect stability and sometimes low activity of existing catalysts, problems with removing/recycling of catalysts after the reaction, unfavorable patent situation and licensing strategies etc. [4]. Fortunately, the international community of chemists, fully aware of the above limitations, is working hard to develop new metathesis catalysts and strategies in order to solve some of the existing problems. The enormous progress which has been made over last few years provides an equally impressive lesson about the chemist's ability to innovate. The variety of metathesis catalysts now available on the market as well as the number of commercial players involved, are increasing. New applications of this methodology are being developed, including sustainable production of valuable chemicals from renewable sources. The importance of these developments is now widely appreciated and more and more commercial applications will surely follow.

The papers collected in this Thematic Series nicely highlight many of the aspects mentioned above and will certainly help to update the "state of the art" knowledge in this fascinating field. In this Thematic Series contributions from many of the leading practitioners in the area, which cover a wide range of topics related to alkene and alkyne metathesis, are presented. It is therefore a pleasure to serve as Guest Editor for this Thematic Series in the Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry, on "Progress in metathesis chemistry". I would like to thank all authors for their excellent contributions. Enjoy reading them!

Karol Grela

Warsaw, November 2010


Cliques and their generalizations are frequently used to model "tightly knit" clusters in graphs and identifying such clusters is a popular technique used in graph-based data mining. One such model is the s-club, which is a vertex subset that induces a subgraph of diameter at most s. This model has found use in a variety of fields because low-diameter clusters have practical significance in many applications. As this property is not hereditary on vertex-induced subgraphs, the diameter of a subgraph could increase upon the removal of some vertices and the subgraph could even become disconnected. For example, star graphs have diameter two but can be disconnected by removing the central vertex. The pursuit of a fault-tolerant extension of the s-club model has spawned two variants that we study in this article: robust s-clubs and hereditary s-clubs. We analyze the complexity of the verification and optimization problems associated with these variants. Then, we propose cut-like integer programming formulations for both variants whenever possible and investigate the separation complexity of the cut-like constraints. We demonstrate through our extensive computational experiments that the algorithmic ideas we introduce enable us to solve the problems to optimality on benchmark instances with several thousand vertices. This work lays the foundations for effective mathematical programming approaches for finding fault-tolerant s-clubs in large-scale networks.


The city of Bangalore in southern India is undergoing rapid urbanisation and administrative transition. Its growth puts pressure on the available water sources – being mainly the disputed inter-State River Cauvery and the hard-rock aquifers – with ensuing problems of access. These aspects affect how rights to and over water are fulfilled and perceived. Competition for drinking water is intensifying worldwide and over a billion people are estimated to lack safe access to it. Urbanisation and other demographic trends, along with globalisation and climate change, are adding to the changing patterns of water scarcity. The role of rights in attaining and improving access to water is undoubtedly great and often referred to in the general water management debate. The notion is analysed here as having three interlinked dimensions: the right to water as a human right; water in terms of property rights; and water rights. Law treats these rights, and thereby water, differently. For instance, groundwater has traditionally been thought of as invisible and unpredictable. Partly for this reason, it is still left largely unregulated in many parts of the world. In India, according to the proverb, 'the landlord is a water lord'. This has effects on the claim for water as a human right. The dissertation shows that we cannot talk in terms of water and rights until we are aware of how complex rights apply simultaneously, and how they correspond to obligations.


Indian mustard (Brassica juncea (L.) Czern.) belongs in the Brassicaceae and is widely cultivated in Korea for the edible leaves. In May 2011, Indian mustard plants of cv. Cheong-Kyeoja, growing in polyethylene-film-covered greenhouses in Hwaseong, Korea, were observed to be affected by a powdery mildew. Symptoms appeared as circular to irregular white colonies, which subsequently showed abundant hyphal growth on both leaf surfaces. Severely infected plants were unmarketable due to leaf discoloration, and most were not harvested. Voucher specimens have been deposited in the Korea University Herbarium (KUS). Appressoria on the mycelium were well developed, lobed, solitary, or in opposite pairs. Conidiophores were cylindrical, 70 to 115 × 8 to 10 μm, and composed of 3 to 4 cells. Foot-cells of conidiophores were straight to substraight, cylindrical, and relatively short (20 to 30 μm long). Singly-produced conidia were oblong to cylindrical or oval, 27.5 to 50 × 14 to 17.5 μm with a length/width ratio of 1.8 to 3.6, with angular/rectangular wrinkling of outer walls, and lacked distinct fibrosin bodies. Germ tubes were produced in the perihilar position of conidia. No chasmothecia were found. These structures are typical of the powdery mildew Pseudoidium anamorph of the genus Erysiphe. The specific measurements and characteristics were consistent with previous records of Erysiphe cruciferarum Opiz ex L. Junell (1). To confirm the identification, the complete internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region of rDNA of KUS-F24819 was amplified with primers ITS5 and P3 (4), and sequenced directly. The resulting 462-bp sequence was deposited in GenBank (Accession No. KC862331). A GenBank BLAST search of the ITS sequence showed 100% identity (462/462 bp) with those of isolates of E. cruciferarum from B. oleracea var. acephala, B. rapa, and Arabidopsis thaliana (GU721075, EU140958, and FJ548627, respectively). Pathogenicity was confirmed through inoculation by gently dusting conidia onto leaves of five healthy, potted Indian mustard plants of the cv. Cheong-Kyeoja. Five non-inoculated plants served as a control treatment. Inoculated plants were isolated from non-inoculated plants in separate rooms in a greenhouse at 18 to 24°C. Inoculated plants developed symptoms after 7 days, whereas the control plants remained symptomless. The fungus present on the inoculated plants was identical morphologically to that originally observed on the diseased plants, fulfilling Koch's postulates. There are records of E. cruciferarum infecting B. juncea in Europe (Finland, Romania, Sweden, Switzerland), the former Soviet Union, Australia, South Africa, and Asia (India, Japan, and China) (2,3). To our knowledge, this is the first report of powdery mildew caused by E. cruciferarum on B. juncea in Korea. Occurrence of powdery mildew is a threat to quality and marketability of this crop, especially those grown in organic farming where chemical control options are limited. References: (1) U. Braun and R. T. A. Cook. Taxonomic Manual of the Erysiphales (Powdery Mildews), CBS Biodiversity Series No. 11. CBS, Utrecht, 2012. (2) D. F. Farr and A. Y. Rossman. Fungal Databases, Syst. Mycol. Microbiol. Lab., Online publication. USDA ARS. Retrieved 20 March 2013. (3) P. Kaur et al. Plant Dis. 92:650, 2008. (4) S. Takamatsu et al. Mycol. Res. 113:117, 2009.


Since 1980 Tasikmalaya known as "City of SMEs" because of many SMEs are scattered throughout the city. From the various SMEs, embroidery industry covers 45% of the total SMEs, growing rapidly and absorb a lot of labor. But in recent years the industry does not run as well as expected, instead of grow, a lot of SMEs close their business. Preliminary research conducted by in-depth interviews with 56 entrepreneurs indicate that in their opinion, low profit margins and the difficulty of marketing, especially after global products enter the market are considered as a major problem. Unlike most similar previous research, this study was conducted with systems dynamics approach. Until now there has been little research about SMEs conducted with this approach, hopefully this study can give idea for other researchers to take advantage of systems dynamics in deciphering what is happening in a period, and bring insight when build a theory. Here, systems dynamics bring in awareness of the importance to discover business' critical sussess factors and the importance of value re-creation to maintain business in global market.


The paper examines the phenomenon of office workers' overwork. Statistical data demonstrates that modern Russians tend to work more than 40 hours a week, thereby exceeding the legal time allowance that traces its roots back to a period when largescale manual labor was the norm. Increasing proportions of tertiary and quaternary sectors in the Russian economy suggests that the "normal" 40-hour work week is a redundant constraint and workers perceive the "norm" differently. According to the existing literature, overwork can reflect a worker's personality traits, and institutional or economic changes. In the research article, an analysis of the motives of overwork is provided. Also, evidence of the differences in perceptions of what constitutes a "normal" work day and mental borders between work and overwork is presented. It appears that employees perceive overwork not only as overtime work (the number of hours that they work in addition to their contractual hours), it can also be understood as a work-life imbalance, undesirable dramatic change in lifestyle due to the demands of work, and a psychological and/or physical fatigue that can lead to the loss of a "zest for life." The following motives were identified: economic (working additional hours for career advancement, salary growth, or at least job security in the future), social (adherence to corporate norms and values), and psychological (escaping from family problems). Special attention was paid to the analysis of institutional working conditions (organizational characteristics) which can lead to overwork.


A high-voltage step-up ratio inverter for applications using batteries as the input power source is proposed to supply the emergency power requirement from a battery pack when the grid is down. The proposed inverter is composed of an interleaved coupled-inductor boost converter and a three-leg full-bridge inverter. Four series-connected lead acid batteries are used as the input power source. When 110 and 220 V AC outputs are required by the load sides at the same time, the 48 V DC input from the batteries would be boosted up to 350 V DC for the three-leg inverter to provide AC output power. However, if only 110 V AC is required, the proposed control strategy would reduce the step-up ratio for a lower DC link voltage of 175 V DC to enhance the conversion efficiency. Moreover, to minimize damage to the batteries, the interleaved circuit topology is adopted to reduce the input current ripple. A prototype with 400 W rated output power is finally constructed. The controller is implemented with a low-cost microcontroller, HT66F50. From the experimental results, it is seen that even under unbalanced load conditions, the output AC voltage is well controlled. The total efficiency of the proposed inverter with 110/220 V AC output is 89.8%, and the efficiency of the inverter with only 110 V AC output is 91.1%.


Over the several past years, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) has conducted field tests for different pre-cooling strategies in different commercial buildings within California. The test results indicated that pre-cooling strategies were effective in reducing electric demand in these buildings during peak periods. This project studied how to optimize pre-cooling strategies for eleven buildings in the Tri-City Corporate Center, San Bernardino, California with the assistance of a building energy simulation tool -- the Demand Response Quick Assessment Tool (DRQAT) developed by LBNL's Demand Response Research Center funded by the California Energy Commission's Public Interest Energy Research (PIER) Program. From the simulation results of these eleven buildings, optimal pre-cooling and temperature reset strategies were developed. The study shows that after refining and calibrating initial models with measured data, the accuracy of the models can be greatly improved and the models can be used to predict load reductions for automated demand response (Auto-DR) events. This study summarizes the optimization experience of the procedure to develop and calibrate building models in DRQAT. In order to confirm the actual effect of demand response strategies, the simulation results were compared to the field test data. The results indicated that the optimal demand response strategies worked well for all buildings in the Tri-City Corporate Center. This study also compares DRQAT with other building energy simulation tools (eQUEST and BEST). The comparison indicate that eQUEST and BEST underestimate the actual demand shed of the pre-cooling strategies due to a flaw in DOE2's simulation engine for treating wall thermal mass. DRQAT is a more accurate tool in predicting thermal mass effects of DR events.


Ever growing costs incurred by solid waste management have forced many developed countries to implement new environmental policies with the purpose of sharing with manufacturers and marketers the costs involved in handling and treating post-consumer waste. The concept Extended Producer Responsibility that emerged in Europe in the 1990s, quickly gained momentum across the continent and a few years later influenced new regulations all around the world. Brazil is one of the most recent countries to adopt the concept through the National Solid Waste Policy that was passed in 2010. This regulatory framework supports the principle of shared responsibility with which manufacturers, distributors and retailers are now responsible for its own post-consumer waste. This research aims at discussing the limitations and perspectives of the reverse logistics model implemented in Brazil. Results indicate that increasing use of multilayer materials, lack of tributary incentives for consumption of recyclable material and high costs of transportation pose a series of challenges to fulfill the legislation targets.


The compression of hyperspectral images (HSIs) has recently become a very attractive issue for remote sensing applications because of their volumetric data. In this paper, an efficient method for hyperspectral image compression is presented. The proposed algorithm, based on Discrete Wavelet Transform and Tucker Decomposition (DWT-TD), exploits both the spectral and the spatial information in the images. The core idea behind our proposed technique is to apply TD on the DWT coefficients of spectral bands of HSIs. We use DWT to effectively separate HSIs into different sub-images and TD to efficiently compact the energy of sub-images. We evaluate the effect of the proposed method on real HSIs and also compare the results with the well-known compression methods. The obtained results show a better performance of the proposed method. Moreover, we show the impact of compression HSIs on the supervised classification and linear unmixing.


Purpose: RNA interference (RNAi) of survivin gene can induce cancer apoptosis. In the current study, combined survivin shRNA (small hairpin RNA) and radiotherapy is expected to enhance the efficacy of radiotherapy in human lung cancer in vitro and in vivo.
Methods: The pGenesil2 expression vectors containing survivin shRNAs was used to transfect A549 human lung adenocarcinoma cells and nude mouse grafts, followed by 5 Gy X-rays radiation. The MTT assay was performed to determine cell proliferation. Flow cytometry was used to detect the apoptosis of A549 cells. Tumor volumes were measured. Quantitative real-time PCR and Western blotting were performed to detect both mRNA and protein levels of survivin and caspase-3 in both A549 cells and nude mouse grafts.
Results: A549 cell proliferation and nude mouse grafts were inhibited in the shRNA alone, 5 Gy alone and shRNA+5 Gy groups, in particular the shRNA+5 Gy group. Apoptotic percentage increased in the 5 Gy, shRNA and shRNA+5 Gy groups, in particular the shRNA+5 Gy group. Survivin mRNA and protein levels in both A549 cells and nude mouse grafts decreased in the shRNA alone and shRNA+5 Gy groups. Caspase-3 protein in both A549 cells and nude mouse grafts increased in the shRNA alone, 5 Gy alone and shRNA+5 Gy groups, in particular the shRNA+5 Gy group.
Conclusion: Combined survivin shRNA and X-ray radiation can enhance the efficacy of radiotherapy by promoting the apoptosis of lung adenocarcinoma via upregulation of caspase-3 in vitro and in vivo. Combined survivin-targeted genotherapy and radiotherapy may be a potential strategy for treating lung cancer.


Hensen9s node in the chick embryo contains prospective cells in a down triangle-shaped midline region of the prospective medial half somite cells in the lateral node mesoderm, whilst lateral somite cells are derived part of the primitive streak (Selleck and Stern, 626, 1991). In the present study, we have investigated of these mesoderm cells to their fates by grafting regions of the node and primitive streak. By this way, we have attempted to discover whether and somite cells can change their fates. We find that cells in the midline down triangle-shaped portion of when grafted into a different region, continue to notochord, or form a separate notochord-like the prospective somitic cells do not appear to be somitic fate.


The surface geometry after laser hybrid arc welding is an important quality criterion. What is often called welding in a rough industrial environment can in many cases systematically be reduced to a few local conditions of the joint edge during welding, particularly depending on the edge preparation technique. In the present study, beside the influence of surface oxides studied in separate publications, the conditions are reduced to the local gap width, vertical surface position and edge mismatch. Gas cut edge conditions are compared to milling and laser cutting. By scanning the steel edges of a 10 mm butt joint before and during hybrid welding and relating the systematic variation of the above three properties to the scanned topology of the resulting weld, quantitative correlations are identified. By the aid of high speed imaging, explanations for the trends can be found. Operating windows with controllable trends can be quantitatively mapped and distinguished from instable regimes. Beside higher roughness, gas cut edges show a superimposed edge oscillation of longer periodicity, being less visible but important. During welding, concave surface bending and gap widening alter the initial conditions. Awareness and quantitative identification of the edge conditions is recommended to control the welding process in a rough industrial environment.


High energy conversion efficiency, decreased environmentally-sensitive emissions and fuel flexibility have attracted increasing attention toward solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) systems for stationary, transportation and portable power generation. Critical durability and cost issues, however, continue to impede wide-spread deployment. Many intermediate temperature (600-800°C) planar SOFC systems employ metallic alloy interconnect components, which physically connect individual fuel cells into electric series, facilitate gas distribution to appropriate SOFC electrode chambers (fuel/anode and oxidant[air]/cathode) and provide SOFC stack mechanical support. These demanding multifunctional requirements challenge commercially-available and inexpensive metallic alloys due to corrosion and related effects. Many ongoing investigations are aimed at enabling inexpensive metallic alloys (via bulk and/or surface modifications) as SOFC interconnects (SOFC(IC)s). In this study, two advanced physical vapor deposition (PVD) techniques: large area filtered vacuum arc deposition (LAFAD), and filtered arc plasma-assisted electron beam PVD (FA-EBPVD) were used to deposit a wide-variety of protective nanocomposite (amorphous/nanocrystalline) ceramic thin-film (<5μm) coatings on commercial and specialty stainless steels with different surface finishes. Both bare and coated steel specimens were subjected to SOFC(IC)-relevant exposures and evaluated using complimentary surface analysis techniques. Significant improvements were observed under simulated SOFC(IC) exposures with many coated specimens at ~800°C relative to uncoated specimens: stable surface morphology; low area specific resistance (ASR <100mΩ·cm >1,000 hours); and, dramatically reduced Cr volatility (>30-fold). Analyses and discussions of SOFC(IC) corrosion, advanced PVD processes and protective coating behavior are intended to advance understanding and accelerate the development of durable and commerciallyviable SOFC systems.


Milton and Homer: 'Written to After times.' By Gregory Machacek. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2011. Pp. 194. $58. Gregory Machacek's welcome book on Homer has (unfortunately to my mind) a dual purpose: to create a new theory of literary allusion and to apply that theory to our understanding of Milton's use of Homer. As he puts it in the introduction, "The book thus has two complementary aims: on the one hand, employing an enriched understanding of the phenomenon of allusion, I offer an account of the relation between Milton and Homer; on the other hand, I use my examination of the relation between Milton and Homer as an opportunity to refine further our understanding of the nature of allusion" (p. 7) . As a result, large portions of the book do not deal with the Homer-Milton connection at all. Only chapter two, "'Dire Example': The War in Heaven as Admonitory Exemplum," deals with specific references to Homer, and then only in relation to books five and six oi Paradise Lost. In chapter six, " 'Instruct Me': Institutional Considerations in Milton's Evolving Literary Ambitions," Homer is left behind altogether, except as a model Milton allegedly followed in ensuring that his great work would achieve canonical status. I count just three references to Homer's Odyssey in the entire text, two of which are cited in tandem with citations from the Iliad. Working his way through the thorny terminology of literary theory, Machacek points out that there are no discrete terms to distinguish between the text alluded to and the text making the allusion. Thus he comes up with his own terminology, the "spur" being the text alluded to, and the "reprise" the text making the allusion (pp. 31-36). I myself hope that this precise, unambiguous terminology will be adopted, but I fear that it will not go beyond Machacek's stipulative use of the terms here, doomed to vanish along with many other useful critical constructs. Chapter three, "'A Fabric Wonderful': The Marvelous and Verisimilar in Milton's Christian Epic," discusses (with little specific reference) Milton's Homer in relation to Milton's Virgil, as well as the later work of Tasso. Here Machacek makes two interesting claims about Milton's allusive practices: one, that many of Milton's allusions to Homer are not really meaningful in themselves ("While many allusions have no local significance, such allusions nevertheless have an aggregate effect" [p. 85]) and two, that Milton breaks with Virgil's practice of episodic imitation of Homer to focus on stylistics: "But Milton seems to have decided that it was not so important for his epic to look like the Aeneid as to sound like the Iliad. He breaks with Virgil in terms of the 'method of imitation' that Virgil's practice has suggested was proper to epic composition. Milton imitates Homer (and other writers) primarily at the level of the phrase rather than of the episode - suggesting by this practice that what makes a particular poem an epic is not a conventional set of episodes, but a particular stylistic or aesthetic effect, one in which wonder combines with familiarity" (p. 79). Two other significant claims that Machacek makes for Milton's allusive practices are that, first, he follows the example of Virgil in the practice of "topping" Homer, except that he decides to expand the contest by "topping" Virgil as well as Homer. For example, when Homer's Zeus threatens to fling disobethent gods into Tartarus, a place "'as far beneath the house of Hades as from earth the sky lies' [Iliad, 8.] 16), Virgil doubles Homer's measure . …


Renaissance humanists tended to disregard medieval scholasticism. But most of humanist anti-scholasticism was directed against late medieval exaggerations in the areas of conceptualism and nominalism. Therefore, it is interesting to find out whether these humanists had a precise and justified view of medieval philosophers and theologians, and especially of Thomas Aquinas. Two writings of humanists, which expressly deal with Aquinas, namely the Encomium S.~ThomaeAquinatis by Lorenzo Valla (1457) and the Opus aureum in Thomistas (1490s) by Johannes Baptista Spagnoli Matnovano give witness of the humanist philosophical approach to the saint and teacher of the Church. A look at these two treatises discloses some basic features of humanist thought, and ex negativo of the importance and specific value of Thomas Aquinas in the post-medieval culture. They also show samples of how monopolizing one authority might endanger its very acceptance.


Residuality plays an essential role for learning finite automata. While residual deterministic and non-deterministic automata have been understood quite well, fundamental questions concerning alternating automata (AFA) remain open. Recently, Angluin, Eisenstat, and Fisman (2015) have initiated a systematic study of residual AFAs and proposed an algorithm called AL* – an extension of the popular L* algorithm – to learn AFAs. Based on computer experiments they have conjectured that AL* produces residual AFAs, but have not been able to give a proof. In this paper we disprove this conjecture by constructing a counterexample. As our main positive result we design an efficient learning algorithm, named AL** and give a proof that it outputs residual AFAs only. In addition, we investigate the succinctness of these different FA types in more detail.


Surface electrical stimulation is currently used in therapy for swallowing problems, although little is known about its physiological effects on neck muscles or swallowing. Previously, when one surface electrode placement was used in dysphagic patients at rest, it lowered the hyolaryngeal complex. Here we examined the effects of nine other placements in normal volunteers to determine 1) whether movements induced by surface stimulation using other placements differ, and 2) whether lowering the hyolaryngeal complex by surface electrical stimulation interfered with swallowing in healthy adults. Ten bipolar surface electrode placements overlying the submental and laryngeal regions were tested. Maximum tolerated stimulation levels were applied at rest while participants held their mouths closed. Videofluoroscopic recordings were used to measure hyoid bone and subglottic air column (laryngeal) movements from resting position and while swallowing 5 ml of liquid barium, with and without stimulation. Videofluoroscopic recordings of swallows were rated blind to condition using the National Institutes of Health-Swallowing Safety Scale. Significant (P < 0.0001) laryngeal and hyoid descent occurred with stimulation at rest. During swallowing, significant (P <or= 0.01) reductions in both the larynx and hyoid bone peak elevation occurred during stimulated swallows. The stimulated swallows were also judged less safe than nonstimulated swallows using the National Institutes of Health-Swallowing Safety Scale (P = 0.0275). Because surface electrical stimulation reduced hyolaryngeal elevation during swallowing in normal volunteers, our findings suggest that surface electrical stimulation will reduce elevation during swallowing therapy for dysphagia.


Historically, hardware acceleration technologies have either been application-specific, therefore lacking in flexibility, or fully programmable, thereby suffering from notable inefficiencies on an application-by-application basis. To address the growing need for domain-specific acceleration technologies, this paper describes a design methodology (i) to automatically generate a domain-specific coarse-grained array from a set of representative applications and (ii) to introduce limited forms of architectural generality to increase the likelihood that additional applications can be successfully mapped onto it. In particular, coarse-grained arrays generated using our approach are intended to be integrated into customizable processors that use application-specific instruction set extensions to accelerate performance and reduce energy; rather than implementing these extensions using application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) logic, which lacks flexibility, they can be synthesized onto our reconfigurable array instead, allowing the processor to be used for a variety of applications in related domains. Results show that our array is around 2× slower and 15× larger than an ultimately efficient ASIC implementation, and thus far more efficient than fieldprogrammable gate arrays (FPGAs), which are known to be 3-4× slower and 20-40× larger. Additionally, we estimate that our array is usually around 2× larger and 2× slower than an accelerator synthesized using traditional datapath merging, which has, if any, very limited flexibility beyond the design set of DFGs.


Process modularity describes the extent to which processes can be decomposed into modules to be executed in parallel. So far, research has approached process modularity from a static perspective, not accounting for its temporal evolution. As a result, the understanding of process modularity has been limited to inferences drawn from aggregated analyses that disregard process execution. This article introduces and develops the notion of dynamic process modularity considering the evolving activity network structure as executed by people. Drawing on network science, the article quantifies process modularity over time using archival data from an engineering design process of a biomass power plant. This article shows how studying the temporal evolution of process modularity enables a more complete understanding of activity networks, facilitates the comparison of actual process modularity patterns against formal engineering design stages, and provides data-driven decision-support for process planning and interventions. Finally, managerial recommendations for interface management, resource allocation, and process decomposition are proposed, to help practitioners better to understand and manage dynamic processes.


How severe is the literacy gap in our schools? Why does the nine-year-old child from a culturally disadvantaged background so often fall victim to the fourth-grade slump? Although the cognitive abilities of these "children at risk" may be consistent with the norm, their literacy development lags far behind that of other children. In "The Reading Crisis," the renowned reading specialist Jeanne Chall and her colleagues examine the causes of this disparity and suggest some remedies.Using Chall's widely applied model of reading development, the authors examine the strengths and weaknesses in the reading, writing, and language development of children from low-income families in an attempt to identify the onset of their difficulties. They show how, in the transition from learning the medium to understanding the message, the demands on children's reading skills become significantly more complex. The crucial point is fourth grade, when students confront texts containing unfamiliar words and ideas that are beyond the range of their own experience. According to Chall's findings, the lack of specific literacy skills--not cognitive factors--explains the deceleration in the reading and writing development of low-income children. The authors outline an active role for the schools in remedying weaknesses in literacy development, and give suggestions for the home and the community. Their recommendations address both practical issues in instruction and the teacher-student dynamic that fosters literacy development.


ABSTRACT The series of papers introduced by this one address a range of statistical applications in plant pathology, including survival analysis, nonparametric analysis of disease associations, multivariate analyses, neural networks, meta-analysis, and Bayesian statistics. Here we present an overview of additional applications of statistics in plant pathology. An analysis of variance based on the assumption of normally distributed responses with equal variances has been a standard approach in biology for decades. Advances in statistical theory and computation now make it convenient to appropriately deal with discrete responses using generalized linear models, with adjustments for overdispersion as needed. New nonparametric approaches are available for analysis of ordinal data such as disease ratings. Many experiments require the use of models with fixed and random effects for data analysis. New or expanded computing packages, such as SAS PROC MIXED, coupled with extensive advances in statistical theory, allow for appropriate analyses of normally distributed data using linear mixed models, and discrete data with generalized linear mixed models. Decision theory offers a framework in plant pathology for contexts such as the decision about whether to apply or withhold a treatment. Model selection can be performed using Akaike's information criterion. Plant pathologists studying pathogens at the population level have traditionally been the main consumers of statistical approaches in plant pathology, but new technologies such as microarrays supply estimates of gene expression for thousands of genes simultaneously and present challenges for statistical analysis. Applications to the study of the landscape of the field and of the genome share the risk of pseudoreplication, the problem of determining the appropriate scale of the experimental unit and of obtaining sufficient replication at that scale.


To extend the frontier of genome editing and enable the radical redesign of mammalian genomes, we developed a set of dead-Cas9 base editor (dBEs) variants that allow editing at tens of thousands of loci per cell by overcoming the cell death associated with DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) and single-strand breaks (SSBs). We used a set of gRNAs targeting repetitive elements – ranging in target copy number from about 31 to 124,000 per cell. dBEs enabled survival after large-scale base editing, allowing targeted mutations at up to ~13,200 and ~2610 loci in 293T and human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs), respectively, three orders of magnitude greater than previously recorded. These dBEs can overcome current on-target mutation and toxicity barriers that prevent cell survival after large-scale genome engineering. One Sentence Summary Base editing with reduced DNA nicking allows for the simultaneous editing of >10,000 loci in human cells.


Wade Clark Roof and William McKinney argue that a new voluntarism is slowly eroding the old social and economic boundaries that once defined and separated religious groups and is opening new cleavages along moral and life-style lines. Nowhere has the impact of these changes been more profoundly felt than by the often-overlooked religious communities of the American center, or mainline--Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish. "American Mainline Religion" provides a new "mapping" of the families of American religion and the underlying social, cultural, and demographic forces that will reshape American religion in the century to come. Going beyond the headlines in daily newspapers, Roof and McKinney document the decline of the Protestant establishment, the rise of a more assimilated and public-minded Roman Catholicism, the place of black Protestantism and Judaism, and the resurgence of conservative Protestantism as a religious and cultural force.


This paper will focus on industrial development and its impact on environment with both social and economic dimension .The roles of impact assessment as a mitigating instrument to the problems and means of achieving sustainability is examined. However, industries overtime has been approaching sustainable development issues from corporate social responsibility perspective. A critical review of the corporate social responsibility concept and approach is considered to know the extent to which impact assessment instrument is emphasized. Further to that is a look at global compact which is a system to make business act as corporate responsible citizens, even though it has neither "policing or enforcing mechanism". It is therefore opined that this gap could be bridged by impact assessment. And to illustrate this thinking, comparative review of cases is done in order to know how impact assessment can be use in making partnerships for managing social issues in extractive industry work. The conclusion is that impact assessment principles should be integrated in to corporate social responsibility code of conduct and as a reporting mechanism tool. By these the aim of global compact to achieve sustainable global economy would be realized.


The objective of this study was to develop a downramping regime for the Jackson Hydroelectric Project on the Sultan River in Washington that minimizes the stranding of juvenile salmon and steelhead while providing flexibility for power production benefits. The results of this study indicate that a downramping rate of 6 in/hr measured at the powerhouse tailwater, as initially stipulated in the project license, would be acceptable under some conditions but would cause excessive stranding of salmonid fry under other conditions. Susceptibility to stranding was particularly evident for salmon fry less than 50 mm long and for steelhead fry less than 40 mm long. On the basis of these findings a downramping regime was developed with rates ranging from 1 in/hr to 6 in/hr depending on season, river stage, and time of day. The study results strongly indicate the need to evaluate fry stranding potential on a river-by-river basis to account for differences in channel morphology, fish species, fry emergence time, and fish growth.


Abstract Yew (Taxus baccata L.) longbow was the preferred weapon in the Middle Ages until the emergence of guns. In this study, the tensile, compression, and bending properties of yew were investigated. The advantage of yew over the other species in the study was also confirmed by a simple beam model. The superior toughness of yew has the effect that a yew longbow has a higher range compared with bows made from other species. Unexpectedly, the mechanical performance of a bow made from yew is influenced by the juvenile-to-mature wood ratio rather than by the heartwood-to-sapwood ratio. A yew bow is predicted to have maximized performance at a juvenile wood content of 30–50%, and located at the concave side (the compressive side facing the bowyer). Here, the stiffness and yield stress in compression should be as high as possible.


Methanotrophic bacteria convert methane to methanol using methane monooxygenase (MMO) enzymes. In many strains, either an iron-containing soluble (sMMO) or a copper-containing particulate (pMMO) enzyme can be produced depending on copper availability; the mechanism of this copper switch has not been elucidated. A key player in methanotroph copper homeostasis is methanobactin (Mbn), a ribosomally produced, post-translationally modified natural product with a high affinity for copper. The Mbn precursor peptide is encoded within an operon that contains a range of putative transporters, regulators, and biosynthetic proteins, but the involvement of these genes in Mbn-related processes remains unclear. Extensive time-dependent qRT-PCR studies of Methylosinus trichosporium OB3b and the constitutive sMMO-producing mutant M. trichosporium OB3b PP358 show that the Mbn operon is indeed copper-regulated, providing experimental support for its bioinformatics-based identification. Moreover, the Mbn operon is co-regulated with the sMMO operon and reciprocally regulated with the pMMO operon. Within the Mbn and sMMO operons, a subset of regulatory genes exhibits a distinct and shared pattern of expression, consistent with their proposed functions as internal regulators. In addition, genome sequencing of the M. trichosporium OB3b PP358 mutant provides new evidence for the involvement of genes adjacent to the pMMO operon in methanotroph copper homeostasis.


Over the past two decades, the greater prevalence of global supply chains has had contrasting effects on Western manufacturing clusters. While some of them dwindled, others proved resilient. Contributing to the recent literature on co-located clusters and clusters' linkages, we focus on the impact of lead firms' strategies on the competitiveness of a pair of 'twin' clusters located in Northeast Italy. Our findings suggest that production remains 'sticky' when leading firms pursue 'process-embedded' innovation by integrating global market and local technical knowledge. We refer to this type of firm as a Knowledge Integrator and discuss how its strategy supports the competiveness of localized suppliers.


Abstract. Predicting the evolution of ice sheets requires numerical models able to accurately track the migration of ice sheet continental margins or grounding lines. We introduce a physically based moving-point approach for the flow of ice sheets based on the conservation of local masses. This allows the ice sheet margins to be tracked explicitly. Our approach is also well suited to capture waiting-time behaviour efficiently. A finite-difference moving-point scheme is derived and applied in a simplified context (continental radially symmetrical shallow ice approximation). The scheme, which is inexpensive, is verified by comparing the results with steady states obtained from an analytic solution and with exact moving-margin transient solutions. In both cases the scheme is able to track the position of the ice sheet margin with high accuracy.


Musical agents which can interact with human musicians in concert situations are a reality, though the extent to which they themselves embody human-like capabilities can be called into question. They are perhaps most correctly viewed, given their level of artificial intelligence technology, as 'projected intelligences', a composer's anticipation of the dynamics of a concert setting made manifest in programming code. This thesis will describe a set of interactive systems developed for a range of musical styles and instruments, all of which attempt to participate in a concert by means of audio signal analysis alone. Machine listening, being the simulation of human peripheral auditory abilities, and the hypothetical modelling of central auditory and cognitive processes, is utilised in these systems to track musical activity. Whereas much of this modelling is inspired by a bid to emulate human abilities, strategies diverging from plausible human physiological mechanisms are often employed, leading to machine capabilities which exceed or differ from the human counterparts. Technology is described which detects events from an audio stream, further analysing the discovered events (typically notes) for perceptual features of loudness, pitch, attack time and timbre. In order to exploit processes that underlie common musical practice, beat tracking is investigated, allowing the inference of metrical structure which can act as a co-ordinative framework for interaction. Psychological experiments into human judgement of perceptual attack time and beat tracking to ecologically valid stimuli clarify the parameters and constructs that should most appropriately be instantiated in the computational systems. All the technology produced is intended for the demanding environment of realtime concert use. In particular, an algorithmic audio splicing and analysis library called BBCut2 is described, designed with appropriate processing and scheduling faculties for realtime operation. Proceeding to outlines of compositional applications, novel interactive music systems are introduced which have been tested in real concerts. These are evaluated by interviews with the musicians who performed with them, and an assessment of their claims to agency in the sense of 'autonomous agents'. The thesis closes by considering all that has been built, and the possibilities for future advances allied to artificial intelligence and signal processing technology.