This study examined the influence of different management practices under sugarcane production on soil chemical, biological and physical properties on a long-term (59yr) field experiment in KwaZulu-Natal. These management practices included conventional post-harvest burning of crop residues, with the tops either left on the soil surface or with tops removed, and green cane harvesting with the retention of crop residues on the soil surface as a trash blanket. Each of these treatments were either fertilized or did not receive fertilizer. The data collected was used to evaluate the effect of crop residue management on soil quality under sugarcane production . Soil organic matter content increased from 39 g C kgsoil, under conventional burning to 55 g C kgsoil in the surface 10 cm under green cane harvesting where crop residues are returned to the soil. It also resulted in greater recycling of nutrients and increases in exchangeable K and Ca and extractable P. Fertilizer application resulted in a build-up of soil nutrients in combination with trash retention. Fertilizer application induced increases in exchangeable P and also some accumulc:tion in soil organic P. Exchangeable and non-exchangeable K concentrations were also higher in fertilized than non-fertilized treatments. However, nitrogen fertilizer application and, to a lesser degree, organic matter mineralization, resulted in soil acidification to a depth of 30 cm. Acidification in the fertilized treatments resulted in a concomitant increase in exchangeable acidity and exchangeable AI, due to the increase in H+ ions and solubilized AI species on exchange sites. Base cations moved into soil solution and were leaching to lower soil layers. The decrease in soil pH resulted in the surface charge conferred on the variable charge surfaces on soil colloids becoming less negative and as a result there was a decrease in ECEC. Acidification in fertilized treatment not only increased exchangeable AI but also the buffering reserve of non-exchangeable al; both that complexed with soil organic matter (CuCbextractble) and that present as hydroxy AI associated with mineral colloids ii (ammonium acetate extractable). The increased organic matter content under trash retention resulted in an increase in ECEC. This enabled the soil to retain greater amounts of Ca Mg and K+ which were returned to the soil in the trash. Both residue retention and fertilizer application had a positive effect on the microbial biomass C and N and the microbial quotient increased from 0.39% to 0.86% as organic C increased from 39 g C kgsoil under burnt treatments to 55 g C kg-1 soil under trashed, fertilized treatments. This increase was associated with increased concentrations of labile organic material (K2S04-extractable) present as well as increased amounts of nutrients being cycled through the plantsoil system. The light fraction organic matter also increased with increasing returns of organic residues. However, the large active microbial biomass under the trashed, fertilized treatment resulted in an increased turnover rate of this fraction and consequently resulted in lower LF dry matter, C and N than in the unfertilized treatment. Aggregate stability increased with increasing amounts of organic material returned due to trash retention. Nevertheless, fertilized treatments induced a lower aggregate stability than unfertilized ones, despite the tendancy for the latter to have higher organic C and microbial biomass values. This was attributed to an increase in the proportion of exchangeable cations present in monovalent form (due to application of fertilizer K and leaching of Ca and Mg) favouring dispersion and a decline in aggregate stability. Green cane harvesting resulted in an increase in microbial activity (basal respiration, FDA hydrolytic activity, arginine ammonification rate and dehydrogenase activity) and in the activity of specific soil enzymes involved in turnover of C, N, P and S to a depth of 30 cm. Increased activities of these enzymes reflect a higher rate of turnover of C, N, P and S. The metabolic quotient decreased with increasing residue return, indicating a more metabolically efficient microbial community. Fertilizer application resulted in a variable effect on enzyme activity. Long-term fertilizer application resulted in an increase in III invertase and acid phosphatase, a decrease in L-histidase and arylsulphatase and had little effect on protease and alkaline phosphatase. These variable effects were explained in terms of an interaction between fertilizer induced increases in COrg and soil nutrient status and fertilizer induced soil acidification. The size and activity of the soil microbial biomass was studied in the plant row and in the inter-row of a sugarcane field under burning or green cane harvesting. Soils were sampled to 30 cm depth in (i) the centre of the plant row, (ii) 30 cm out from the row centre and (iii) 60 cm out from the row centre (i.e. the middle of the inter-row area). Under burning, the only substantial input of organic matter to the soil was from root turnover in the row area where the root biomass was concentrated. As a consequence, the size (microbial biomass C) and activity (basal respiration of the soil microbial community were concentrated in the row. However, under green cane harvesting there was a large input of organic matter in the inter-row area in the form of the trash blanket itself and through turnover of crop roots that were concentrated in the surface 10 cm of the soil below the blanket. As a result, soil microbial activity was considerably higher in the interrow area under green cane harvesting than under burning. Phospholipids are essential membrane components of microorganisms and a good correlation was found between the total PLFA's extracted from soils and the microbial biomass C, indicating that phospholipids are an accurate measurement of living biomass. Mutivariate statistical analysis (PCA) was used to separate different PLFA profiles under burning versus trash retention and under different land uses (sugarcane, maize, annual and perennial pasture and undisturbed veld). Soil organic matter content contributed the greatest variance in the data along the first axis. That is increasing soil organic matter return not only increased the size of the microbial biomass, but also affected the composition of the microbial community. There was a shift in the different sub-fractions under different management practices. MUFA's are general biomarkers of Gram negative bacteria and were found to be a sensitive indicator of higher substrate availability (i.e they increased under green cane harvesting). Fungal biomarkers IV indicated an increased fungal biomass associated with surface application of residues. Soil physical conditions were considered to be a contributing factor to the shift in microbial community structure. Increased organic matter content improved soil physical conditions and preferentially stimulated the growth of aerobic microorganisms. In addition to this, the proportion of SATFA (gram positive bacteria) was found to increase in response to burning. This increase was attributed to the survival mechanisms of these microorganisms (i.e. endospore formation). It was found that the conversion from burning to trash management changes the composition of the soil microbial community. The effect of management practices on soil functional diversity was also evaluated using two methods (i.e. Biolog plates and substrate induced respiration (SIR». Biolog plates are a selective technique that stimulate growth of a small proportion of the soil microbial community whereas the SIR technique measures the activity of the metabolically active microbial community in situ. As a result the SIR method separated treatments more effectively than Biolog plates (i.e. annually tilled treatments, permanent grassland sites and fertilized and unfertilized treatments). The quantity and the quality of organic C supply influenced the catabolic diversity. Conversion from burning to green cane harvesting greatly increased catabolic evenness and richness and therefore presumably also tended to increase the resilience of the soil to stress and disturbance particularly in relation to decomposition functions . It was concluded that conversion from preharvest burning to green cane harvesting results in an increase in soil organic matter content, an improvement in soil structure and soil nutrient status, an increase in the size, activity, taxonomic and functional diversity of the soil microbial community. The practice should therefore be promoted to the South African sugar industry.


The article considers the judicial reform of 1864 and its importance for the development of civil procedural legislation in Ukraine. The author supports the idea that there is a need to improve the mechanism of judicial protection of violated rights and legitimate interests in civil proceedings through judicial reforms and that this can be done by considering the lessons from history. The results of the implementation of the judicial reform of the late nineteenth century on the territory of the Russian Empire offer the best solutions to the problems that are experienced in modern civil proceedings. The way that the legal statutes were implemented, in particular the Statute of Civil Procedure in the Ukrainian provinces which were part of the Russian Empire, will provide an opportunity to analyze the legal aspects and sociocultural phenomena that influenced it. This in turn will enable conclusions to be drawn about the prospects for the harmonization of the national civil procedural law and international standards of justice. In modern conditions these approaches have a great impact on the fundamental underlying ideas of civil justice – optionality and adversarial nature of process, openness and transparency of the proceedings, the court's independence and impartiality, commitment and enforceability of judgments.


Working memory is important for a number of higher cognitive functions such as problem solving, reasoning, reading and language comprehension. Moreover, working memory measures are significantly correlated with measures of intellectual abilities. Investigating the neural basis of working memory provides the opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of individual differences in general cognitive ability. This thesis aimed to elucidate the roles of brain oscillations in working memory, with a particular focus on theta and gamma frequency bands. Two techniques were employed that are best suited for the non-invasive study of brain oscillations: scalp recorded EEG and transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS). In the first step, correlational studies were conducted followed by neuromodulatory studies in the next step. The results showed that individuals with high working memory capacity, contrasted against individuals with low working memory capacity, display stronger alpha and gamma band desynchronisation and increased coherence in the theta frequency band between fronto- parietal areas during maintenance and between frontal brain areas during retrieval. The results further demonstrated that interactions between theta and gamma frequency bands are related to individual differences in working memory capacity. The neuromodulatory studies showed that theta tACS applied over parietal brain areas can be used to enhance performance on working memory tasks, thereby providing support for the causal role of theta band oscillations in working memory.


Genetic mechanisms underlying abnormal early neural development in toddlers with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) remain uncertain due to the impossibility of direct brain gene expression measurement during critical periods of early development. Recent findings from a multi‐tissue study demonstrated high expression of many of the same gene networks between blood and brain tissues, in particular with cell cycle functions. We explored relationships between blood gene expression and total brain volume (TBV) in 142 ASD and control male toddlers. In control toddlers, TBV variation significantly correlated with cell cycle and protein folding gene networks, potentially impacting neuron number and synapse development. In ASD toddlers, their correlations with brain size were lost as a result of considerable changes in network organization, while cell adhesion gene networks significantly correlated with TBV variation. Cell cycle networks detected in blood are highly preserved in the human brain and are upregulated during prenatal states of development. Overall, alterations were more pronounced in bigger brains. We identified 23 candidate genes for brain maldevelopment linked to 32 genes frequently mutated in ASD. The integrated network includes genes that are dysregulated in leukocyte and/or postmortem brain tissue of ASD subjects and belong to signaling pathways regulating cell cycle G1/S and G2/M phase transition. Finally, analyses of the CHD8 subnetwork and altered transcript levels from an independent study of CHD8 suppression further confirmed the central role of genes regulating neurogenesis and cell adhesion processes in ASD brain maldevelopment.


Extracted from text ... I
Good things happen
on a Friday
74 Management Today Yearbook 2007
Werner Barkhuizen is managing director
of Saville Consulting in South Africa and
may be reached at werner.
email@example.com.
It was early evening as the chairman sat
cocooned in the back of his large luxury
vehicle listening to a business programme
on radio. Reuben, his driver, was at the
wheel coping with the Friday evening city
traffic.
The radio presenter finished an interview
with a retail sector CEO whose share
prices were doing well and moved on to
another item.
Once again the chairman heard someone
struggling to ..


The goals of this work are a design and implementation of a new vision system, integrated with the waterjet machine. This system combines two commercial webcams applied on an industrial dedicated platform. A main purpose of the vision system is to detect the position and rotation of a workpiece placed on the machine table. The used object recognition algorithm consists of edge detection, standard math processing functions and noise filters. The Hough transform technique is used to extract lines and their intersections of a workpiece. Metric rectification method is used, in order to obtain a top view of the workspace and to adjust an image coordinate system, accordingly to the waterjet machine coordinates. In situ calibration procedures of the booth webcams are developed and implemented. Experimental results of the proposed new vision system prototype confirm required performance and precision of the element detection.


This paper presents the linearised small-signal dynamic modelling of hydroelectric turbine-generator (TG) unit with CIGRE first high-voltage direct current (HVDC) benchmark system in the synchronously rotating D-Q reference frame for small-signal stability analysis. The interaction behaviour between the hydroelectric unit and the dynamics and control of HVDC system is investigated utilising eigen-analysis, participation factor analysis and by conducting sensitivity studies. The computation of eigenvalues and eigenvectors for small signal stability analysis provides an invaluable insight onto the power system dynamic behaviour by characterising the damping and frequency of the system oscillatory modes. The consequences of different operating conditions, such as active and reactive power variations, the variation of generator-to-turbine inertia ratio, as well as the changes of HVDC constant current controller parameters on small-signal system stability are investigated.


As the NASA Space Exploration Initiative (SEI) program contemplates a permanent presence on both the Lunar and Martian soil, the necessity for On-Orbit Construction of the Earth-to-Lunar/Martian Transfer Vehicle becomes a primary concern. The Center for Space Construction at the University Of Colorado is interested in analyzing the assembly, construction, and checkout of such vehicles. Once the On-Orbit Construction requirements have been evaluated, (i.e., vehicle configuration, mass properties analysis, vehicle assembly sequence, etc.) a simulation model can be applied to estimate the Assembly Time, Tool Efficiency (by 'Tools' for orbital assembly we are referring to space cranes, docking devices, teleoperated assembly robots, astronaut maneuvering units, etc.), effect of low Mean Time between Failures, and many other operationally significant aspects of On-Orbit Construction of the interplanetary Transfer Vehicle. First, we consider Total Assembly Time. It is important to know the project assembly time i.e. the lapsed time from beginning to completion. By using SIMORB, a simulation model developed by Mark L. D'Amara, an M.S. candidate in the Aerospace Engineering Sciences Department at the University of Colorado, a time schedule for the construction of the transfer vehicle can be presented. Once the Total Assembly Time has been evaluated, orbital assembly tool efficiency can be addressed. By varying the tools used for certain assembly projects, the impact on completion time change can be evaluated. Different tool application can and will either expedite or dramatically hinder the construction process. The choice of Telerobotic Robots versus Astronaut Extra Vehicular Activity (EVA) is a another sensitive factor in the total time and reliability of the construction sequence. Due to man's vulnerability in the space environment, many feel it is a necessity to use robotics rather than EVA. How will this decision affect the construction time? This is a decision that SIMORB can evaluate and about which it can generate valuable data. Finally, one must evaluate the effect due to low Mean Time Between Failure. If a connection fails or an EVA suit malfunctions, what is the effect on the Total Assembly Time? By the use of an Orbital Assembly Simulation Model the effects of a low Mean Time Between Failures can be accurately evaluated and adjusted for in the Total Assembly Time. Then the simulation model will be used to answer specific questions of design and on-orbit assembly mission planning.


Strategic and corporate entrepreneurship have been widely acknowledged by scholars and executives alike as an effective means of revitalizing organizations to improve performance. Spurring entrepreneurial behavior and exploration within established organizations, however, remains a big challenge facing today's businesses. As organizations grow and age over time, like people in general, they tend to become set in their ways of thinking, learning, managing and acting – they become less flexible and less willing to sense and seize new opportunities. There is little doubt that the mindsets and organizational attributes needed for exploring and leveraging new opportunities are radically different from those needed for smoothening ongoing operations, making it difficult to pursue both sets of activities at the same time within an organization. Given the importance for future sustainable growth, scholars have yet to uncover how organizations may reconcile conflicting demands and resolve the challenges associated with corporate entrepreneurship's emphasis on leveraging existing opportunities as well as new ones 'out there'. The aim of this inaugural address is to draw the foundations and to identify emergent opportunities for moving forward research on strategic entrepreneur - ship in general and on corporate entrepreneurship in particular. It considers the challenges associated with corporate entrepreneurship and details important organizational and managerial features of successful organizations that span different levels of analysis. The inaugural address concludes that the integration of theory and research in strategic management and entrepreneurship using such a multilevel approach generates valuable new research avenues underlying a prosperous research agenda.


This critical reflection is based on the belief that creative practitioners should be using their own well-established approaches to trouble dominant paradigms in health and care provision to both form and inform the future of healing provision and well-being creation. It describes work by a transdisciplinary team (drama and medicine) that is developing a methodology which is rooted in productive difference; an evolving synergy between two cultural and intellectual traditions with significant divergences in their world-view perceptions, approaches and training methods. This commonality is underpinned by four assumptions that: (1) human-to-human interactions matter, (2) context matters, (3) the whole person and their community matters and (4) interpretation matters. In this paper, we reflect on the project's early stages and uses of this methodology to investigate the fundamental human-to-human interaction of a person seeking healing (a healee) with a healer. We believe that this interaction enables the healing response – the intrinsic ability of the human organism to self-heal and regain homeostasis.


BACKGROUND
The control of retinal pigment epithelial cell proliferation is an essential factor in the clinical management of proliferative vitreoretinopathy (PVR). Factors inhibiting PVR without toxic potential are of special interest in ophthalmology. The aim of the study was to investigate the antiproliferative and cytotoxic effects of a preservative-free triamcinolone acetonide (PFTA) suspension on a human retinal pigment epithelial (ARPE19) cell line in vitro.

MATERIAL/METHODS
ARPE19 cells (immortal non-transformed cells from a human donor) were seeded and incubated in vitro with increasing concentrations of PFTA (0.01-1 mg/ml). After 1, 3, and 7 days, cellular proliferative activity was assessed by 5'-bromo-2'-deoxyuridine (BrdU) incorporation into cellular DNA and cell proliferation was determined using the 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay. To determine cytotoxicity, ARPE19 cells were grown to confluence and subsequently cultured in serum-deficient medium to ensure a static milieu and the MTT test was performed after 24 hours of incubation with PFTA. Cell recovery after transient PFTA exposure was also compared with continuous exposure after 7 days.

RESULTS
PFTA inhibits ARPE19 cell proliferation in a dose-dependent manner. Significant inhibition of cell proliferation was observed on the first day of the study at 1, 0.1, and 0.01 mg/ml PFTA and significant reductions in ARPE19 cells were noted for 1 and 0.1 mg/ml PFTA. Proliferation was resumed in all ARPE19 cultures and was dependent on the initial PFTA concentration. PFTA did not cause a cytotoxic effect.

CONCLUSIONS
PFTA influences the proliferation of vital ARPE19 cells in a reversible manner without cytotoxic effect.


Semiconductor quantum wires (QWRs) and quantum dots (QDs) represent important classes of low-dimensional quantum nanostructures, useful for studies and applications of quasi one- and zero-dimensional systems. Recently, considerable efforts have been devoted to developing QWRs and QDs of high optical quality for studying the properties of these low dimensional structures. However, realization of QWRs and QDs in a highly reproducible and controllable manner remains challenging. The present thesis systematically investigated a novel QWR-QD system self-formed in inverted tetrahedral pyramids due to capillarity induced alloy segregation effect during metallorganic vapor phase epitaxy (MOVPE). Growth of an otherwise homogenous AlGaAs layer inside the pyramid results in formation of a Ga-enriched vertical QWR (VQWR) running through the center of the pyramid, along the growth axis, and three vertical QWs (VQWs) at the three wedges of the pyramid. Since the VQWR forms along the growth direction, the structure and the composition can be adjusted via the growth conditions and parameters, offering possibilities of achieving QWR structures with controlled potential. In particular, the composition and/or structure of these wires can be tailored with monolayer accuracy, opening the way for a new generation of complex low dimensional nanostructures of different functionalities. Moreover, these QWRs are embedded in a semiconductor matrix, so that high quality interface can be achieved. This feature offers opportunities for integrating these QWRs in electronic and optical devices. As a starting point, we studied the formation mechanisms involved in the pyramid system, particularly the alloy segregation effect. This forms the basis for the entire project, giving useful guidance in structural design for the more complex structures investigated later. The Ga-Al segregation is evidenced by high resolution electron microscopy images and photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy. A simple diffusion model was developed to interpret the effect qualitatively and quantitatively. Quantum confinement of electrons and holes in these wires is evidenced by peculiar transitions observed in the PL spectra at high excitation levels and confirmed by theoretical modeling of these structures. The wires are also connected to a set of higher bandgap, self-ordered VQWs that promote carrier capture into the wire. The temperature dependence of the PL spectra clearly reveals efficient carrier capture into the VQWR from the surrounding VQWs, particularly at an intermediate temperature range (∼ 100 Κ) where the carrier mobility is enhanced. Cathodoluminescence spectroscopy is applied to identify the individual structures and to investigate the carrier transfer within the structures. In the next step, we systematically shortened the VQWR to bring the structure into the QD regime, simply by decreasing the grown layer thickness from nearly one micron to several nanometers. Thus, a continuous transition from two-dimensional to three-dimensional quantum confinement was realized in the very same system, revealing the impact of dimensionality on the electronic and optical properties of the nanostructures. Several advanced measurement techniques were employed in this study, including polarization-resolved and time-resolved PL spectroscopy. Three main evidences for the QWR-QD transition were observed experimentally and confirmed theoretically: (i) strongly blue-shifted ground state emission, accompanied by increased separation of ground and excited transition energies; (ii) change in the orientation of the main axis of linear polarization of the PL, from parallel to perpendicular with respect to the growth axis; and (iii) prolonged exciton radiative lifetime. The optical properties of the single QDs were also studied. Single- and correlated photon emission from single QD were demonstrated by photon correlation measurements. The success in fabrication of QDs with controlled potential inside the pyramids stimulated the development of QD molecules by stacking several QDs on top of each other. In our QD molecule systems, QDs are tunnel-coupled via connected QWRs. The stronger tunnel coupling in this integrated QD-QWR system allows the hybridization of both electron and hole states, yielding direct-real-space excitonic molecules. Evidence for this hybridization was provided by polarization-resolved PL spectroscopy confirming the formation of delocalized hole states, and by photon correlation spectroscopy showing photon bunching for bonding- and anti-bonding QD-molecule transitions. The QD molecule configuration could be modified intentionally for probing local electron/hole probability density, by insertion of very thin barriers as perturbations in the given structure at specified positions. In conclusion, the controlled growth in inverted pyramids provides considerable freedom in designing complex nanostructures that are difficult to achieve with purely self-assembly approaches. The investigated structures provide new information on low-dimensional systems and hold promise for the development of nano-photonic devices for quantum information processing applications.


Purpose: To evaluate the outcome of strabismus surgery for congenital superior oblique palsy (SOP) in relation to correction of head tilt and hypertropia. The cohort of patients mainly involved very young children. This is the first study to use a standardized instrument to objectively measure torticollis before and after surgery. Materials and Methods: A non-comparative interventional case series of 13 cases of congenital superior oblique palsy with head tilt, who underwent simultaneous superior oblique tuck and inferior oblique recession between Jan 2000 and Dec 2008, were studied. Results: The mean duration of SOP until surgery was 36.8 months. Of the 12 unilateral cases, 8 were right-sided. Mean follow-up period was 17 months (range 7-36). The outcome was determined at the last follow-up. Mean pre-and post-operative hypertropia (p.d.) in forced primary position was 19 ± 7 and 2 ± 6, respectively (P < 0.0001). The head tilt reduced from mean of 17 ± 9 to 2 ± 2 degrees (P < 0.0001). Success, defined as hypertropia <5 PD and head tilt less than 5 degrees, was achieved in 69% (9/13. C.I. 42-88%) and 85% (11/13. C.I. 56-96%), respectively. The success rate for achieving both criteria was 61.5% (C.I. 35-88%). Five patients required additional surgery; usually a contralateral inferior rectus muscle recession, which was successful in all cases. One case developed asymptomatic Brown syndrome (7.69% - C.I. 6.7-22.2). Conclusions: Simultaneous superior oblique tuck and inferior oblique muscle recession can successfully treat selected cases of congenital superior oblique palsy. About one-third required an additional procedure, which led to total normalization of the head position.


It is now more than ten years since researchers in the US Knowledge Sharing Effort envisaged a future where complex systems could be built by combining knowledge and services from multiple knowledge bases and the first agent communication language, KQML, was proposed (Neches et al., 1991). This model of communication, based on speech acts, a declarative message content representation language and the use of explicit ontologies defining the domains of discourse (Genesereth & Ketchpel, 1994), has become widely recognised as having great benefits for the integration of disparate and distributed information sources to form an open, extensible and loosely coupled system. In particular, this idea has become a key tenet in the multi-agent systems research community.


Regulation and the negligence rule are both designed to obtain compliance with desired standards of behavior, but they differ in a primary respect: compliance with regulation is ordinarily assessed independently of the occurrence of harm, whereas compliance with the negligence rule is evaluated only if harm occurs. It is shown in a stylized model that because the use of the negligence rule is triggered by harm, the rule enjoys an intrinsic enforcement cost advantage over regulation. Moreover, this cost advantage suggests that the examination of behavior under the negligence rule should often be more detailed than under regulation—as it frequently is in fact.


The Center for Archaeological Research at The University of Texas at San Antonio conducted an archaeological survey for the Paloma Subdivision in Bexar County, Texas. The project area is located in east Bexar County and consisted of approximately 328 acres. During the survey, 85 shovel tests were excavated and sites 41BX1792, 41BX1793, 41BX1794, and 41BX1795 were identified and recorded. Two of the sites possessed prehistoric components (41BX1792 and 41BX1793). A temporal affiliation was not discernable for 41BX1793 but one diagnostic (stem of an Edwards projectile point) was recovered from 41BX1792 dating the site to the Late Prehistoric. 41BX1794 and 41BX1795 were historic farmstead sites with standing structures dating to the early-20th century to mid-20th century. None of the sites documented during the project were eligible for listing to the National Register for Historic Places (NRHP) or formal designation as State Archeological Landmarks (SAL). Further work is not recommended on any of archaeological sites recorded during the Paloma Subdivision survey. The San Antonio Historic Preservation Office (HPO) concurred with the recommendations. All materials recovered during the investigations were deeded to the Center for Archaeological Research by the land owner and are curated at the Center, along with all project related documents.


Modeling non-linear data as symmetric positive definite (SPD) matrices on Riemannian manifolds has attracted much attention for various classification tasks. In the context of deep learning, SPD matrix-based Riemannian networks have been shown to be a promising solution for classifying electroencephalogram (EEG) signals, capturing the Riemannian geometry within their structured 2D feature representation. However, existing approaches usually learn spatial-temporal structures in an embedding space for all available EEG signals, and their optimization procedures rely on computationally expensive iterations. Furthermore, these approaches often struggle to encode all of the various types of relationships into a single distance metric, resulting in a loss of generality. To address the above limitations, we propose a Riemannian Embedding Banks method, which divides the problem of common spatial patterns learning in an entire embedding space into K-subproblems and builds one model for each subproblem, to be combined with SPD neural networks. By leveraging the concept of the "separate to learn" technology on a Riemannian manifold, REB divides the data and the embedding space into K non-overlapping subsets and learns K separate distance metrics in a Riemannian geometric space instead of the vector space. Then, the learned K non-overlapping subsets are grouped into neurons in the SPD neural network's embedding layer. Experimental results on public EEG datasets demonstrate the superiority of the proposed approach for learning common spatial patterns of EEG signals despite their non-stationary nature, increasing the convergence speed while maintaining generalization.


The Solar Energy and Building Physics Laboratory of the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) has been involved in research and technological development of solar energy for building applications since the middle of the seventies. Focusing first on the investigation of passive and hybrid solar technologies by the way of a dedicated experimental building [1], the laboratory contributed to generate knowledge in favour of low energy houses, characterised by thermal energy intensities lower than 110 MJ/m2.year (equivalent to 3 litres of fossil fuel/m2.year). These pioneering activities were translated later on for practitioners through novel building codes [2] and energy standards - such as Minergie and Minergie-P [3], which contributed in a very significant way to the stabilisation of the national demand for heating fuel, while mitigating simultaneously the related GHG emissions. Important research and tech transfer efforts were dedicated in the nineties to the integration of other solar technologies to buildings, as illustrated by the exhibition center for photovoltaic building integration on the EPFL campus [4]. Joined to daylighting and passive cooling research and practice, they altogether led to the recent construction in Switzerland of a first EnergyPlus building, showing a positive net energy balance over a yearly period (i.e. generating more heat and electricity than required for its operation) [5].The research emphasis is placed over the last years on the investigation of technologies issued from nano sciences, which can contribute to improve further the integration of solar technologies into buildings. Among the later the elaboration of coloured energy efficient solar collectors is aimed : it could contribute to disseminate decentralised energy production through the country by the way of such efficient solar buildings.


Received: April 15, 2018 Accepted: May 11, 2018 Published: May 30, 2018 Volume:1 Issue: 1 Language switching in L2 writing may be defined as any non – instructed use of the first language during the L2 writing process (Cumming, 1989). In a protocol analysis of L2 writing from 20 adult EFL Iranian students, this research observed how language-switching (L-S), i.e., L1 use in L2 writing, was affected by L2 proficiency and task difficulty. ANOVA results suggest that language proficiency could not affect sharply on language-switching process when we consider it in the inter group relationship (Z= 0.968)1 but when we consider language proficiency in the intra group relationship (P=0.01). On the other hand, more difficult tasks increased the duration of L1 use in L2 writing (P=0.01) KEYWORDS


Abstract Layang-Layang is a small island part of an oceanic atoll in the Spratly Islands off Sabah, Malaysia. As the reef coral fauna in this part of the South China Sea is poorly known, a survey was carried out in 2013 to study the species composition of the scleractinian coral families Fungiidae, Agariciidae and Euphylliidae. A total of 56 species was recorded. The addition of three previously reported coral species brings the total to 59, consisting of 32 Fungiidae, 22 Agariciidae, and five Euphylliidae. Of these, 32 species are new records for Layang-Layang, which include five rarely reported species, i.e., the fungiids Lithophyllon ranjithi, Podabacia sinai, Sandalolitha boucheti, and the agariciids Leptoseris kalayaanensis and Leptoseris troglodyta. The coral fauna of Layang-Layang is poor compared to other areas in Sabah, which may be related to its recovery from a crown-of-thorns seastar outbreak in 2010, and its low habitat diversity, which is dominated by reef slopes consisting of steep outer walls. Based on integrative molecular and morphological analyses, a Pavona variety with small and extremely thin coralla was revealed as Pavona maldivensis. Since specimens from Sabah previously identified as Pavona maldivensis were found to belong to Pavona explanulata, the affinities and distinctions of Pavona maldivensis and Pavona explanulata are discussed.


Purpose Measurement of the number of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in the bloodstream has been shown to have prognostic significance in treating breast carcinoma. This pilot study was formulated to determine if stage IV non-small cell lung carcinomas similarly shed malignant cells into the circulation and if their presence has prognostic significance. Methods Patients with stage IV non-small cell lung carcinomas were tested once for CTCs in 7.5 ml of their blood prior to receiving any treatments. A proprietary blood collection kit produced by Veridex LLC (Raritan, NJ), which manufactures the instrument that performs the immunomagnetic CELLSEARCH ® CTC assay, was used. Tumor measurements were determined in three dimensions by the same radiologist using computerized axial tomography. The three-dimensional sum was used to represent tumor size. Survival from the date of the pretreatment CTC assay was monitored and recorded. Data were analyzed statistically using NCSS8 statistical software (NCSS LLC, Kaysville, UT). Results Of 19 evaluable patients, 10 had no detectable CTCs. There was no relation between intrapulmonary primary tumor size and the number of CTCs, nor between tumor size and survival. Survival was not affected by gender or age at entry into the trial. The mean survival of those with no detectable CTCs was 536 ± 91.1 days versus 239 ± 96.0 days for those with 1 or more detectable CTCs, a statistically significant advantage (P=0.034) favoring those without CTCs. Conclusions Patients with a CTC score of 0 survived significantly longer than those with a CTC score of ≥ 1. Survival was not correlated with gender, age or primary tumor size. Recovery of CTCs potentially provides a noninvasive source of tumor cells for genomic profiling, which may enable development of a custom treatment plan for the individual patient. Further investigations are warranted and needed. (J Patient Cent Res Rev. 2016;3:136-141.)


High stretchability and mechanical stability are the key properties of a conductive polymer composite structure. In this work, an anisotropic composite is fabricated by wet 3D printing of epoxy crosslinked chitosan/carbon microtubes. The carbon microtubes were synthesized through a high temperature carbonization of chemically purified cellulose fibres. After the chemical treatment and high temperature carbonization, the removal amorphous substrates from the core of cotton fibres results in the formation of a tubular structure. Here, chitosan which is an abundant natural polymer was used as the composite matrix. It was found that the epoxy crosslinking increases the stretchability of composite filaments.


In human addicts, craving and relapse are frequently evoked by the recall of memories connected to a drug experience. Established memories can become labile if recalled and can then be disrupted by several interfering events and pharmacological treatments, including inhibition of protein synthesis. Thus, reactivation of mnemonic traces provides an opportunity for disrupting memories that contribute to pathological states. Here, we tested whether the memory of a drug experience can be weakened by inhibiting protein synthesis after the reactivation of its trace. We found that an established morphine conditioned place preference (mCPP) was persistently disrupted if protein synthesis was blocked by either anisomycin or cycloheximide after the representation of a conditioning session. Unlike other types of memories, an established mCPP did not become labile after contextual recall, but required the concomitant re-experience of both the conditioning context and the drug. An established mCPP was disrupted after the conditioning session if protein synthesis was blocked selectively in the hippocampus, basolateral amygdala, or nucleus accumbens but not in the ventral tegmental area. This disruption seems to be permanent, because the preference did not return after further conditioning. Thus, established memories induced by a drug of abuse can be persistently disrupted after reactivation of the conditioning experience.


The Health and Safety Laboratory has developed a miniature respirable sampler to gain a better understanding of the exposure of workers to hazardous substances when they are wearing respiratory protective equipment (RPE) or helmets with visors in the workplace. The study was in two parts and the first part, described herein, was to develop the sampler and test its collection characteristics. Assessment of the impact of the sampler on RPE safety and its comparability with traditional laboratory-based approaches to measure protection factors was discussed in a second article. The miniature sampler (weight-5.4g, length-13mm) was designed to fit into the space available between the nose and chin of an individual inside a filtering facepiece type mask and has a radially omnidirectional inlet with a porous foam particle selector that allows the collection of the respirable fraction on a downstream filter. The sampling efficiency was compared with the respirable convention. A close match with the respirable convention was obtained at a flow rate of 1 l min-1 and the 50% penetration cut off value (d 50) was 4.08 µm. After 3 hours sampling in high humidity (95%), the penetration curve had shifted towards smaller particle sizes (d 50 = 3.81 µm) with 88% of the calculated bias values within 10%. The miniature sampler measured respirable dust and crystalline silica mass concentrations comparable with performance of the Safety In Mines Personal Dust Sampler (SIMPEDS), commonly used in Great Britain, at a flow rate of 0.8 l min-1 The d 50 for the miniature sampler at 0.8 l min-1 (4.4 µm) is within 5% of the d 50 of the SIMPEDS at its prescribed flow rate of 2.2 l min-1 (4.2 µm). These results indicated that the miniature sampler was a good candidate to proceed with tests with RPE described in the second part of this series of two papers.


Constrained sampling and counting are two fundamental problems in artificial intelligence with a diverse range of applications, spanning probabilistic reasoning and planning to constrained-random verification. While the theory of these problems was thoroughly investigated in the 1980s, prior work either did not scale to industrial size instances or gave up correctness guarantees to achieve scalability. Recently, we proposed a novel approach that combines universal hashing and SAT solving and scales to formulas with hundreds of thousands of variables without giving up correctness guarantees. This paper provides an overview of the key ingredients of the approach and discusses challenges that need to be overcome to handle larger real-world instances.


This study explored the effects of cross-age tutoring as an instructional mode in the
development of thinking skills in Mathematics. Six mixed-ability Grade One students
were tutored by six high-ability Grade 6 students in three thinking strategies in addition.
A tutoring model was developed to facilitate more effective tutoring of the thinking
skills. The tutors modelled, rehearsed, allowed their students to apply the strategy and
encouraged students to reflect on what they had done. This model was later modified as
a result of the research findings. Subjects were tutored daily over a four week period in
the `min' model, Near Doubles and Build to Ten strategies. Tutor-student interactions
were recorded. A Tutoring Scaffolds Protocol was developed to categorise tutors'
scaffolds. A significant similarity was found in the techniques that tutors use to correct
students' responses. To assist in developing understandings of the tutoring process tutor
responses were placed within the six scaffolded functions proposed in the work of
Wood, Bruner and Ross (1976). A model of tutors' repair strategies was proposed to
explain tutors' scaffolding functions.
It was concluded that tutoring was an effective method for teaching thinking skills
when it was used with other activities that encourage the development of shared
understandings of the learning process. It was proposed that repair strategies offered by
the tutors could be taught in tutor training sessions, thereby fostering the metacognitive
understandings of students involved in tutoring programs.


Ceftazidime is widely used in the therapy of infectious complications in neutropenic patients. We studied an outbreak of ceftazidime-resistant gram-negative bacillary infections in pediatric cancer patients receiving empirical ceftazidime therapy for neutropenic fever. Fourteen isolates (12 Klebsiella pneumoniae and 2 Escherichia coli) from 13 patients were studied. Specimens were obtained from multiple clinical sites including blood, urine, throat, and lung. The organisms were resistant to ceftazidime, aztreonam, and penicillins but remained susceptible to cephamycins and imipenem. All resistant isolates produced a novel beta-lactamase (TEM-26) with a pI of approximately 5.58, which was transferred by transformation to E. coli on a 7.9-kb nonconjugative plasmid which cotransferred resistance to trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole. This enzyme readily hydrolyzed ceftazidime, aztreonam, and penicillins in a spectrophotometric assay. DNA sequencing data suggest that TEM-26 is derived from TEM-1.


Upper extremity exercise training has been shown to improve clinical outcomes in different chronic health conditions. Arm-operated bicycles are frequently used to facilitate upper extremity training however effective use of these devices at patient homes is hampered by lack of remote connectivity with clinical rehabilitation team, inability to monitor exercise progress in real time using simple graphical representation, and absence of an alert system which would prevent exertion levels exceeding those approved by the clinical rehabilitation team. We developed an interactive biking exercise (iBikE) platform aimed at addressing these limitations. The platform uses a miniature wireless 3-axis accelerometer mounted on a patient wrist that transmits the cycling acceleration data to a laptop. The laptop screen presents an exercise dashboard to the patient in real time allowing easy graphical visualization of exercise progress and presentation of exercise parameters in relation to prescribed targets. The iBikE platform is programmed to alert the patient when exercise intensity exceeds the levels recommended by the patient care provider. The iBikE platform has been tested in 7 healthy volunteers (age range: 26-50 years) and shown to reliably reflect exercise progress and to generate alerts at pre-setup levels. Implementation of remote connectivity with patient rehabilitation team is warranted for future extension and evaluation efforts.


At the heart of the analyses of landscape genetics are isolation models seeking to explain either interindividual or interpopulation connectivity. These models use spatial, ecological, and topographic predictor variables measured between sites in an attempt to explain observed genetic variation. During the past decade, these models have adopted an increasingly sophisticated set of techniques to quantify intervening physical and ecological spaces, although they are restrained by rather mundane approaches to characterizing the genetic components of connectivity. Population Graphs are one approach to improving the quantification of genetic covariance used in models of landscape genetics. I explain the construction of the Population Graph framework, explain its strengths and weaknesses, and provide examples of how it has been used during the past decade within the contexts of landscape and population genetics.


Description: This book is based on our most recent investigations revealing the complexity of the determinants of burn out in different populations at risk (health care professions, teachers, social workers etc.). Based on our empirical study we have developed a model of vulnerability to burn out which explains it as a specific complementary interaction between certain personality profile and the psychological climate at work place. In the course of evaluation there have been employed different inventories which are now validated as an assessment battery in about 300 subjects. Temperament and Character Inventory (revised) has been exclusively standardized for Bulgarian population as well Although burn out syndrome (BOS) is thoroughly discussed in modern literature, the present proposal is unique in the following aspects:


In this document, we focus on ways of increasing the security of wireless ad-hoc networks. These networks, and more specifically wireless sensor networks, look increasingly like the right answer to a lot of problem, such as data collection over a large area, or providing emergency network infrastructure after a disaster. They are also inherently exposed to malicious intents due to their collaborative nature. In order to protect them, we focus on the security aspects of the protocols built for these networks. We first propose a Secure and Resilient Reputation-based Routing protocol, called SR3. This protocol routes messages according to a reputation metric built using only trusted information. This protocol achieves data confidentiality and data packet unforgeability, which we prove formally using two verification tools: CryptoVerif and Scyther. We experimentally show the resiliency of SR3 against various attack scenarios, and we compared our results to several routing algorithms of the literature. This evaluation shows that both the resiliency and fairness accomplished by SR3 are better than for those others protocols, especially when the network is sparse. Moreover, and unlike previous solutions, if the compromised nodes behavior changes, then SR3 will self-adapt in order to ensure an acceptable quality of service. Analyses of routing protocols security are nearly always supported by simulations, which often evaluate the ability to deliver messages to a given destination. Several competing definitions for secure routing exist, but to our knowledge, they only address source routing protocols. We propose the notion of incorruptibility, a quantitative computational definition for routing security based on the attacker's ability to alter the routes used by messages. These definitions are then illustrated with several routing algorithms. Finally, we study Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) for WANET, and more specifically their inputs. These systems provide a supplementary layer of defenses for WANETs, and they are able to easily detect attacks who are complicated for the network protocols. We classify the different inputs used by the decision process of these IDS, according to their level of required cooperation, and the source of their data. We then propose the InDICE tool, a decision aid which, given an IDS, allows automated discovery of undetectable attacks according to the inputs used by that IDS. In the end, we apply our framework to discover weaknesses in two existing IDS.


Sarcosine is extensively discussed as potential prostate cancer oncometabolite. Sarcosine dehydrogenase (SARDH) is one of the key enzymes involved in sarcosine metabolism that catalyses oxidative demethylation of sarcosine to glycine in mitochondrion. This study investigates the effects of small interfering RNA (siRNA) mediated SARDH knockdown on gene expression of sarcosine metabolism related enzymes: glycine N-methyltransferase (GNMT), peroxisomal sarcosine oxidase (PIPOX) and dimethylglycine dehydrogenase (DMGDH). The effect of SARDH knockdown was studied in three human prostate cell lines (PNT1A, DU-145, PC3) and gene expression was evaluated by quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR). Although the lowest SARDH knockdown was achieved in cancer DU-145 cell line, the highest changes in expression of other sarcosine metabolism genes were detected. In particular, the significant increase in DMGDH and PIPOX expression was observed. Our findings revealed potential stimulation effect of SARDH knockdown on DMGDH and PIPOX expression in prostate cancer cell line DU-145.


The World Health Organization (WHO) clinical criteria for managing acute respiratory tract infections are sensitive for detecting episodes of severe pneumonia and have been useful in improving the management of childhood pneumonia in developing countries and contributing to the reduction of childhood mortality. The timing of the chest radiograph in relation to the onset of the lung infection, the initiation of antibiotics, and the immune response being mediated by the host may therefore influence the radiological presentation associated with bacterial pneumonia. Comparing the estimates of the efficacy of pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV) from different studies provides insight into the global potential of conjugate vaccines to prevent pneumococcal pneumonia, although the findings of such an undertaking need to be interpreted with caution. A summary of conjugate pneumococcal vaccine efficacy (VE) and burdens of pneumonia prevented in efficacy trials in the United States, South Africa, and The Gambia is provided in this chapter. Despite the variation in estimates of vaccine efficacy against radiologically confirmed pneumonia, the estimates of the efficacy of PCV in reducing the incidence of clinically diagnosed lower respiratory-tract infection (LRTI) were almost identical (efficacy, 6.0 to 7.0%) among the studies for non-HIV-infected low-risk children. The effect that the introduction of PCV would have on the epidemiology of pneumococcal pneumonia in developing countries may be truly appreciated only following the widespread use of the vaccine in such countries.


Here we report on a cyclic, physical ice-discharge instability in the Parallel Ice Sheet Model, simulating the flow of a three-dimensional, inherently buttressed ice-sheet-shelf system which periodically surges on a millennial timescale. The thermo-mechanically coupled model on 1 km horizontal resolution includes an enthalpy-based formulation of the thermodynamics, a non-linear stress-balanced based sliding law and a very simple sub-glacial hydrology. The simulated unforced surging is characterized by rapid ice streaming through a bed trough, resulting in abrupt discharge of ice across the grounding line which is eventually calved into the ocean. We identify and visualize the central feedbacks that dominate the sub-sequent phases of ice build-up, surge and stabilization which emerge from the interaction between ice dynamics, thermodynamics and the sub-glacial till layer. A reduction in the surface mass balance or basal roughness yields a damping of the feedback loop which suggests that thinner ice sheets may be less susceptible to surging. The presented mechanisms underlying our simulations of self-maintained, periodic ice growth and destabilization may play a role in large-scale ice-sheet surging, such as the surging of the Laurentide Ice Sheet, which is associated with Heinrich Events, and ice-stream shut-down and reactivation, such as observed in the Siple Coast region of West Antarctica.


Mermaiding, the practice of wearing a mermaid tail and/or costume, and often swimming in costume, began in the mid-20th Century and has since grown into a global phenomenon. Despite its increasing popularity, there appears to be no research exploring mermaiding as a tourism activity. Consequently, this is the first study exploring the motivations and experiences of mermaid tourists, employing a case study approach at a mermaid school on the island of Boracay in the Philippines. Semi-structured interviews with one male and eight females, including an instructor/owner, revealed three major themes – fantasy, coastal and marine environment and the marine "other" – with a further overlapping of three core subthemes – power, beauty and hedonism. These subthemes helped explain the motivations to partake in such activities, which included being a waterperson, mythology, novelty and marine conservation. Despite a range of nationalities among the respondents (Brazil, Germany, New Zealand, United States, Philippines and Sweden), it is suggested that more extensive research on mermaiding be undertaken, especially at various locations around the globe.


In June 2000 a distinguished group of obstetricians, midwives, general practitioners, and medical statisticians came together to discuss maternal care. Chaired by Professor James Drife from Leeds, discussion ranged over many topics, including: the changing role of the obstetrician, general practitioners, and the increasing status and responsibility of midwives. Other subjects include the induction of labour, obstetric analgesia and anaesthesia, and debates about the place and kind of delivery that women wanted. Among those who attended and contributed were: Ms Beverley Beech, Dr Michael Bull, Sir Iain Chalmers, Professor Geoffrey Chamberlain, Ms Mary Cronk, Professor Peter Dunn, Ms Chloe Fisher, Mrs Caroline Flint, Ms Rosemary Jenkins, Dr Irvine Loudon, Professor Alison Macfarlane, Professor Lesley Page, Mr Roger Peel, Mr Elliot Philipp, Mrs Wendy Savage, Mrs Vicky Tinsley, Dame Margaret Wheeler and Professor Charles Whitfield. Introduction by Dr Hilary Marland,


This dissertation studies some matrix results and gives their generalizations in the context of semisimple Lie groups. The adjoint orbit is the primary object in our study. The dissertation consists of four chapters. Chapter 1 is a brief introduction about the interplay between matrix theory and Lie theory. In Chapter 2 we introduce some structure theory of semisimple Lie groups and Lie algebras. It involves the root space decompositions for complex and real semisimple Lie algebras, Cartan decomposition and Iwasawa decomposition for real semisimple Lie algebras and Lie groups. They play significant roles in our generalizations. In Chapter 3 we introduce a famous problem on Hermitian matrices proposed by H. Weyl in 1912, which has been completely solved. Motivated by a recent paper of Li et al. [34] we consider a generalized problem in the context of semisimple as well as reductive Lie groups. We give the gradient flow of a function corresponding to the generalized problem. This provides a unified approach to deriving several results in [34]. Chapter 4 is essentially a brief survey on some generalized numerical ranges associated with Lie algebras. The classical numerical range of an n×n complex matrix is the image of the unit sphere in C under the quadratic form. One of the most beautiful properties is that the numerical range of a matrix is always convex. It is known as the Toeplitz-Hausdorff theorem. We give another proof of the convexity of some generalized numerical range associated with a compact Lie group. The Toeplitz-Hausdorff theorem becomes a special case.


Takayasu's arteritis, also called tak, aortic arch syndrome, pulse less disease or occlusive thromboaortopathy is a rare chronic, progressive, autoimmune, idiopathic disease involving inflammation in the walls of the largest arteries in the body: the aorta and its main branches that affect primarily adolescent girls and young women. It most often occurs in people ages 15–40 years, but sometimes affects younger children or middle-aged adults. Here is a case of a young girl diagnosed with takayasu's arteritis whose initial complaints were predominantly high grade fever and malaise with minimal signs of vascular insufficiency.


We use measurements of mantle P-wave velocity from the Moho refracted phase, Pn, to estimate temperature within the uppermost few km of the western U.S. mantle. Relative to other approaches to modeling the deep geotherm, using Pn velocities requires few assumptions and provides a less uncertain temperature at a tightly constrained depth. Assuming a homogeneous mantle composition, Moho temperatures are lowest in an arc that extends from the High Lava Plains through western Montana and the high-plains region of Wyoming and western Kansas/Nebraska. Highest temperatures are observed under recent (<10 Ma) volcanic provinces and are consistent with melting. Estimates of lower crustal viscosity suggest that the western U.S. west of the Laramide deformation front likely has regions of mobile lower crust that decouple upper crustal and upper mantle tractions.


This is the story of how human beings have consumed the resources they need for their own future. It examines the original "future eaters" who were the first people to leave the Afro-Asian homeland and travel down the chain of islands to Australasia and became the Aboriginal, Maori and other Polynesian peoples. They changed the flora and fauna in ways that seem inconceivable. The book then continues on to discuss how Europeans have made an even greater impact and how today "future eating" is a universal occupation.


"All of us share a common curse," bemoaned President Clinton as he urged the passage of his fledgling crime bill. "In the most wonderful country in the world, we have the highest violent crime rate, the largest percentage of our people behind bars" (Denver Post, April 15, 1994). As with other U.S. leaders, however, the "New Democrat" president could not be expected to address the fundamental social fissures that simultaneously foster a terrifying plague of violence while building an increasingly policed and criminalized society. Instead, Clinton's quizzical solution to crime and excessive incarceration, as he defines them, has been a retrenchment of the preceding regime - marginalizing still broader sectors of U.S. society and expanding the state's powers of coercion to control those subsequently labeled as criminal. The overarching effects of this law-and-order strategy toward governance have already been catastrophic. The U.S. imprisons some 560 of every 100,000 citizens and the proportion increases each year (New York Times, October 28, 1994). While critiquing the broad impacts of an increasingly punitive state, however, it is also important to analyze its localized manifestations. It is crucial to study not only the social and political forces behind the new politics of punishment, but also their smaller-scale and largely autonomous institutions. The billions Congress and state legislatures allocate to law enforcement and incarceration create and maintain individual penal institutions, from local jails to federal prisons, each caught within the matrix of the dominant social order. Together they profoundly control the lives of more than 1.5 million individuals, yet they are largely hidden from public view and critique (New York Times, October 28, 1994). One such institution is the newly opened control-unit prison in Florence, Colorado. The new supermaximum-security prison is actually one of four facilities, which together make up the largest federal prison complex in the United States. When completely filled in early 1995, the entire "campus" will incarcerate some 3,000 inmates in four institutions: a minimum-security federal prison camp, a medium-security federal correctional institution (FCI), a maximum-security United States penitentiary, and an administrative-maximum, control-unit prison (ADX). It has been an economic boon for economically depressed central Colorado and the prison promises 750 permanent jobs to this small, rural community. Florence has been long strapped by factory layoffs and throughout the 1980s most local families earned less than $15,000 a year (O'Keeffe, 1991a: 1; Bureau of Prisons, 1989: II-40). Already accustomed to a number of state prisons in the area, the town lobbied hard for the complex. A local newspaper poll found 97% support for the project, and despite the area's meager resources, Florence pulled together an attractive incentives package (O'Keeffe, 1991a: 1). Local citizens held bake sales and sold T-shirts, raising $128,000 to purchase land for the economy-boosting site (Denver Post, May 17, 1991). It is not often that a community asks for a prison to be built next door, and as the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) scrambled to contain a soaring prison population, it eventually accepted their offer. Construction of the $222 million compound began in 1990 (Denver Post, October 27, 1994). Today Florence's Fremont county boasts the highest concentration of inmates in the United States. While prison officials and local residents found a convergence of interests in Florence, prisoners and their advocates are not nearly as enthusiastic. Activists for human rights and social justice are especially concerned about the ADX control unit, slotted to become the highest security and most regimented prison in the United States. The Bureau of Prisons designed Florence as a high-tech replacement for its infamous lock-down prison in Marion, Illinois. After a decade of stinging lawsuits and public protest there, the prisoncrats promised a kinder, gentler supermaximum prison in Florence. …


The contemporary South African state seeks to ensure economic growth and global competitiveness whilst simultaneously redressing apartheid legacies. These are its twin imperatives to effect social and economic transformation. This thesis advances the framework of State-Corporate Social Development (SCSD) to describe and explain policies developed by the post-apartheid government to regulate the social and economic practices of business, and policies adopted by businesses in response. The thesis explores state-market dynamics as these relate to policies promoting black economic empowerment (BEE) in South Africa. Against this broad policy rubric, the research explores, within a wider nexus of stakeholder relationships, the interactions between business and government with reference to two sectors: investment companies and tourism. Extensive legislative and institutional mechanisms have been established to ensure a business environment conducive to government's political agenda. A key driver is the imperative to accelerate the integration of black South Africans into the economic mainstream through BEE policies. The state uses multiple levers to offer incentive or apply sanction. It is shown that the state, as a major consumer of goods and services, is itself a primary agent in transforming socio-economic patterns along market principles. SCSD also includes the response of business to evolving policy and environmental conditions. These responses vary according to the business size, nature, sector and value placed on various stakeholding relationships. The thesis employs stakeholder and social contract theory, and qualitative methods, including 135 interviews, to develop and explain SCSD as it pertains to BEE. Using formal and informal social contracts, it is shown how BEE policy shifted from emphasising equity ownership to a broader-based strategy. The strategy relies on multi-stakeholder relationships and drivers offering economic market-based incentives. The thesis draws conclusions regarding the centrality of the state in providing incentives for corporate social development policy in South Africa. It also suggests broader policy lessons relevant to state-corporate relations and the viability of the SCSD approach.


International business (IB) studies revolve around two key perspectives that can be defined as a firm specific perspective and a generic perspective that combined provide a company with crucial insights into how to enter and navigate a foreign market. Combined, such an approach provides a company with a holistic perception of what kind of resources and capabilities that are needed when entering a specific market as well as what to expect of the host market that the company is planning to enter. The key issue here is how to design a research strategy that is to provide the analyst with data that makes him or her capable of developing a pertinent explanatory framework for how to engage a foreign market. Before starting to look for appropriate research methodologies and tools for data collection, however, a pertinent philosophy of science point of departure has to be selected. This article has chosen to discuss three different philosophies of science. Each one of them is capable of providing the analyst with a specific take on how to 'think' data that are being extracted. Arguably, whatever approach one selects, the choice will have a crucial impact on the outcome of the research process. After settling down on a specific philosophical of science the article moves on to apply this on the Danish shipping company Maersk Line. The key focus here is on how employees at headquarter and in selected subsidiaries 'read' the company's global corporate culture so as to be able to navigate this particular company to their own benefit as well as to the company' per se. The article closes with a critical discussion of the ramification of selecting one philosophy of science over another when engaging in either qualitative or quantitative research in an IB context.


The basic equipment for reflection seismic prospecting is a source for impulsive sound waves, a geophone (something like a microphone), and a multichannel waveform display system. A survey line is defined along the earth's surface. It could be the path for a ship, in which case the receiver is called a hydrophone. About every 25 meters the source is activated, and the echoes are recorded nearby. The sound source and receiver have almost no directional tuning capability because the frequencies that penetrate the earth have wavelengths longer than the ship. Consequently, echoes can arrive from several directions at the same time. It is the joint task of geophysicists and geologists to interpret the results. Geophysicists assume the quantitative, physical, and statistical tasks. Their main goals, and the goal to which this book is mainly directed, is to make good pictures of the earth's interior from the echoes.


ABSTRACT This paper examines women scientists' participation in Knowledge Exchange (KE) with nonacademic actors. We compare three KE types –informal engagement, formal engagement and commercialization– and find significant differences in participation depending on type. In informal engagement, women and men participate equally, but women participate less than men in both formal engagement and commercialization. We explore whether academic rank and women peers influence this participation gap. We find evidence of a levelling effect related to academic rank in the case of formal engagement and an emulating effect related to women peers in the case of commercialization. The implications of the emerging gender patterns are also discussed.


The study aims to analyse some fundamental directions related to the emergence and evolution of the student dormitories pertaining to the University of Iași during the interwar period. The objectives refer to the reactions of the central institutions to the need to create living conditions for the wave of students coming to the city starting with 1918, the evolution of the meaning of student dormitory and the identification of places where spaces designed to encourage young people to study in Iași. The problem of building several student dormitories came against the background of the crisis incurred by the University even from the phase immediately following the union of Bessarabia, Bukovina and Transylvania with the Kingdom of Romania. The plans for student dormitories were permanently dependent on the resources that could be provided by the government authorities. For these reasons, the Ministry of Public Instruction became a determining factor in order to remedy the disorders caused by the sudden increase in the number of students enrolled at the oldest Romanian university. However, the financial support came with delays that blocked the activity of the institution. The 1930s brought more changes in the efforts to create living conditions for the students, although not everyone was able to find a place. The option of renting other buildings has been replaced by investments in the University possessions. The existence of student dormitories went through three major phases in the period between the two World Wars. After the University's attempts to alleviate the crises generated by the increasing waves of students, stage followed aimed to obtain necessary properties to prepare rooms that guarantee the life of young people in Iași. The effects of the economic crisis were visible both in the difficulty of managing the student dormitories and in the impos-sibility of ensuring a place for a large number of students through the construc-tion of new buildings.


Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have certainly changed the higher education landscape around the world. They have opened up opportunities for universities to reconsider quality of education offerings, their traditional business models and award systems for degrees. For many universities, MOOCs have also challenged University funding models, resources and strategic priorities in learning and teaching. The University of Tasmania (UTAS) is the single university in the state of Tasmania, Australia balancing a strong research tradition with the need for a comprehensive course offering to meet the needs of Tasmania. The promise of MOOCs and Open Educational Practices more generally has been recognised by UTAS as a way to meet key institutional priorities and purposes such as enhancing reputation and brand, increasing enrolments, contributing to areas of social and community need and enhancing curriculum offerings. To realise these benefits deep, systematic and institution-wide consideration was required. This was to address the disruptive elements of open courses, but more fundamentally, to contemplate the role of technology enhanced learning in delivering the UTAS curriculum. Central to the development of the strategy was the writing of a White Paper on Technology Enhanced Learning and Teaching (Brown et al., 2013) that provides a five-year vision for the university. The White Paper drew on the literature, international practice and stakeholder consultation both within and beyond the university. To provide a foundation, the White Paper proposed a model of blended learning (the UTAS Blended Learning Model) to establish a shared understanding of the role of technology in unit and course design. At its heart, however, is an examination that UTAS can use technology to extend its influence and contributions to learning and teaching locally, nationally and internationally through Open Educational Practices (OEP). This paper outlines the research and consultation that led to the development of the UTAS OEP strategy, and the processes that have been implemented for adoption of OEP, including a systematically adopted business model for MOOCs. Although only in the early stages of enactment, UTAS has three successful MOOCs and an active Learning Object Repository. Importantly, the strategy is also positively influencing adoption of technology enhanced learning in traditional courses. The implications of the new direction in terms of institutional change and professional development of staff will also be discussed.


In distributed video coding, the reference frames are used to generate a side information at the decoder in order to decode the Wyner-Ziv frame. The quality of side information has a strong impact on the coding efficiency of distributed video coding. The estimation of the side information becomes less accurate when the temporal distance between the neighboring reference frames increases or when the sequence contains fast motion. In this paper, we propose a new method based on successive refinement of the side information by adapting the motion search area after decoding the first DCT band. More specifically, different search areas are initially set, according to the temporal distance between the neighboring reference frames. Furthermore, the size of the search area is adapted to the motion content after decoding the first DCT band by using the partially decoded Wyner-Ziv frame. This adapted search area is used in order to refine the side information after decoding each remaining DCT band. The experimental results show that the proposed technique allows an improvement in rate distortion performance that can reach 0.7 dB for a GOP size of 8, compared to the method where a constant search area is used, and a significant gain up to 3.23 dB, with respect to DISCOVER codec. The improvement in the quality of the final side information reaches 5.6 dB for some frames, compared to constant search area. Moreover, the proposed method reduces significantly the decoding time for all test sequences.


Vietnam as if… follows five young people who have moved from the countryside to the city. Their dramatic everyday lives illuminate some of the most pressing issues in Vietnam today: 'The Sticky Rice Seller' explores gender roles; 'The Ball Boy' is all about the struggles of sexual and ethnic minorities; 'The Professional' examines relations between rich and poor; 'The Goalkeeper' delves into politics and ideology; and 'The Student' reflects upon family and faith. The stories also reboot several classics of Vietnamese literature for the twenty-first century, including 'Floating Dumplings' by feminist poet Ho Xuan Huong, Vu Trong Phung's satire of French colonialism Dumb Luck, Nguyen Du's epic account of fate and sacrifice 'The Tale of Kieu', and the proclamations of Ho Chi Minh. These novellas reveal the deepest sentiments of Vietnamese youth as they – like youth everywhere – come of age, fall in love and contest their destiny. In 2011 Kim Huynh returned to Vietnam, having left more than three decades earlier. He had few plans other than to experience as much of his birthplace as possible. That year he came into contact with a wide range of people and took on many trades. Kim drank and dined with government officials, went on pilgrimages with corporate tycoons and marched in the streets against foreign aggression. He sold sticky rice, was a tennis player and also a ball boy, attended all manner of rituals and celebrations, eavesdropped on people in cafes and restaurants, and went back to the classroom as both a student and a teacher. Rich in detail and broad in scope, these tales capture Kim's experiences and imaginings of Vietnam as if….


An important aspect of Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) is their ability to provide individualized instruction in a manner similar to what offered by a personal human instructor. A student model is described as the information that ITS keeps about an individual student. ITSs should actively support the student's learning process through tailoring the teaching process carried out to each individual student. The main purpose of a student model is to provide the planning component of an ITS with the information it needs to select a suitable instructional action. Probability Theory Intelligent Tutoring System (PTITS) is an intelligent system for teaching the fundamentals of the probability theory. The PTITS' approach to building the student model relies on gathering a great deal of information about the student through employment of both overlay and buggy models. An approach to inexact modeling of student ability based on certainty theory and fuzzy sets theory was adopted as a way to formulate the knowledge required in these models. More adaptability to the student status and more flexibility to diagnose student misconceptions are the main goals behind the conjunction of both models in PTITS. The developed architecture opens the door for more participation from teachers and instructors in developing their own courses using ITSs and hence for more conviction with ITSs' role in education.


BACKGROUND
 The high prevalence of physician burnout, particularly in emergency medicine, has garnered national attention in recent years. Objective means of measuring stress while at work can facilitate research into stress reduction interventions, and wearable photoplethysmography (PPG) technology has been proposed as a potential solution. However, the use of low-burden wearable biosensors to study training and clinical practice among emergency physicians (EP) remains untested.

 OBJECTIVE
 This pilot study aimed to (1) determine the feasibility of recording on-shift photoplethysmographic data from EP, (2) assess the quality of these data, and (3) calculate standard pulse rate variability (PRV) metrics from the acquired dataset and examine patterns in these variables over the course of an academic year.

 METHODS
 A total of 21 EP wore PPG biosensors on their wrists during clinical work in the emergency department during a 9-hour shift. Recordings were collected during the first quarter of the academic year, then again during the fourth quarter of the same year for comparison. The overall rate of usable data collection per time was computed. Standard pulse rate (PR) and PRV metrics from these two time points were calculated and entered into Student t tests.

 RESULTS
 More than 400 hours of data were entered into these analyses. Interpretable data were captured during 8.54% of the total recording time overall. In the fourth quarter of the academic year compared with the first quarter, there was no significant difference in median PR (75.8 vs 76.8; P=.57), mean R-R interval (0.81 vs 0.80; P=.32), SD of R-R interval (0.11 vs 0.11; P=.93), root mean square of successive difference of R-R interval (0.81 vs 0.80; P=.96), low-frequency power (3.5×103 vs 3.4×103; P=.79), high-frequency power (8.5×103 vs 8.3×103; P=.91), or low-frequency to high-frequency ratio (0.42 vs 0.41; P=.43), respectively. Power estimates for each of these tests exceeded .90. A secondary analysis of the resident-only subgroup similarly showed no significant differences over time, despite power estimates greater than .80.

 CONCLUSIONS
 Although the use of PPG biosensors to record real-time physiological data from EP while providing clinical care seems operationally feasible, this study fails to support the notion that such an approach can efficiently provide reliable estimates of metrics of interest. No significant differences in PR or PRV metrics were found at the end of the year compared with the beginning. Although these methods may offer useful applications to other domains, it may currently have limited utility in the contexts of physician training and wellness.


The conventional wisdom on harmless-error doctrine is that there are two different and irreconcilable approaches, reflected in two coexisting lines of Supreme Court cases. Much of the scholarship on harmless error focuses on the difference in these two approaches - whether one looks at the strength of the overall evidence against the defendant, absent the error (the guilt-based approach), or on the likely impact of the error itself on the jury (the error-based approach). But this debate obscures the shared normative ideal at the heart of harmless-error doctrine. I argue that by using tort law, these two approaches can be reconciled in a way that increases the accuracy of harmless-error analysis overall. This Article proposes reconceptualizing harmless-error analysis as a determination of causation in a constitutional tort claim, and using this reconception to provide a way out of the doctrinal morass. By turning to tort-law doctrine, I grapple with the question: what does it mean for an error to cause a conviction? Indeed, different conceptions of factual causation appear to account for many of the differences in harmless-error outcomes in the federal courts. The Article presents an empirical analysis of harmless-error determinations from the past decade, revealing that 93% of cases using a guilt-based or but for approach found that the error was harmless, as opposed to 47% of cases that used an error-based approach, the equivalent of the substantial factor test for factual causation. With either approach, judicial assumptions about the effects of different kinds of evidence on jurors are often remarkably at odds with research on jury behavior. I argue that a hybrid approach to harmless-error analysis can better serve the normative ideal of determining factual causation at criminal trials, and avoid appellate fact-finding that violates the Sixth Amendment. In order to make accurate causal determinations, though, we must make better use of empirical research on how various kinds of errors impact jurors, as well as specific evidence of influence on the jury.


Performance Based Navigation (PBN) is a key element
of the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) NextGen Program. In
order to increase National Airspace System (NAS) capacity and
efficiency, PBN routes and procedures are being developed,
including Area Navigation (RNAV) and Required Navigation
Performance (RNP) procedures. RNAV enables aircraft to fly directly
from point-to-point on any desired flight path using groundor
spaced-based navigation aids. RNP is RNAV with the addition of
onboard monitoring and alerting capability. Both RNAV and RNP
procedures allow aircraft to fly accurate routes without relying on
ground-based navigation aids. RNAV and RNP procedures facilitate
more efficient design of airspace and procedures, offering
significant safety improvements and flexibility to negotiate
terrain, as well as improving airspace capacity and operational
efficiency. The initial implementation of RNAV and RNAV (RNP)
procedures has raised several human factors issues. RNAV (RNP)
Instrument Approach Procedures (IAP) and RNAV Standard Instrument
Departures (SID) and Standard Terminal Arrivals (STARs) often have
more waypoints, altitude constraints and other elements than
conventional procedures, resulting in charts being cartographically
complex. Thus, a chart review was conducted to objectively
understand the procedure elements that contributed to increased
information density and high levels of visual clutter. A total of
sixty-three approach, fifty-two departure, and fifty-four arrival
procedures were analyzed. Primary findings were that the factors
associated with high levels of visual clutter included having
multiple flight paths per page for approach and departure
procedures, and having complex altitude constraints for arrival
procedures. Multiple waypoints per path was also a factor for both
arrivals and approaches. In addition, having RF legs were
additional factor contributing to visual clutter for approach
procedures. One method to mitigate the increased information
density and visual clutter on the RNAV and RNP procedure depiction
is to reduce the number of flight paths shown on a single page by
separating the depicted paths to multiple pages. However, there are
a number of drawbacks to this clutter mitigation technique. Example
drawbacks include having more paper to carry in the flight deck and
more time spent searching for the correct page within a set of
separated pages. An experiment was conducted to determine the
effect of reducing the number of paths depicted on single-page
"Modified" charts. FAA AeroNav Products and Jeppesen created
versions of the Modified chart in their standard cartographical
conventions. The experiment was conducted to evaluate whether these
Modified charts would impact information retrieval time and
accuracy compared with the "Current" charts being used now. Current
FAA AeroNav Products and Jeppesen charts were used as the baseline
condition. Six procedures were studied, including three RNAV
departure procedures from Dallas/Fort Worth, Las Vegas, and Salt
Lake City airports, and…


Women in developing countries are disempowered relative to their contemporaries in developed countries. High youth unemployment and early marriage and childbearing interact to limit human capital investment and enforce dependence on men. In this paper, we evaluate an attempt to jump-start adolescent women's empowerment in the world's second youngest country: Uganda. In this twopronged intervention, adolescent girls are simultaneously provided vocational training and information on sex, reproduction, and marriage. Relative to adolescents in control communities, after two years the intervention raises the likelihood that girls engage in income generating activities by 72% (mainly driven by increased participation in self-employment) and raises their monthly consumption expenditures by 41%. Teen pregnancy falls by 26% and early entry into marriage/cohabitation falls by 58%. Strikingly, the share of girls reporting sex against their will drops from 14% to almost half that level and preferred ages of marriage and childbearing both move forward. The findings indicate that women's economic and social empowerment can be jump-started through the combined provision of vocational and life skills and is not necessarily held back by insurmountable constraints arising from binding social norms.


We present a detailed study of a bipolar, possible Type I planetary nebula (PN), PHR 1315−6555 (PN G305.3−03.1), which was discovered as part of the Macquarie/AAO/Strasbourg Hα planetary nebula project (MASH), and that we considered at the time was an excellent candidate for membership of the distant, compact, intermediate-age open cluster, ESO 96-SC04. The strong evidence for this association is presented here, making this the only known example of a PN physically associated with a Galactic open cluster. Cluster membership is extremely important as it allows for very precise estimates of the fundamental properties of the PN as the cluster is at a known distance. The PN was discovered by one of us (QAP) during systematic MASH searches for new Galactic PNe of the AAO United Kingdom Schmidt Telescope (UKST) Hα survey and had been missed in earlier broad-band surveys, including specific CCD studies of the host cluster. We present original discovery images and Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) 4-m MOSAIC-II camera follow-up narrow-band images that reveal its bipolar morphology. We also present (i) low-resolution optical spectra that spectroscopically confirm the PN, (ii) accurate radial velocities of PN and cluster stars from high-resolution spectroscopy which show they are consistent and (iii) a reliable, independent distance estimate to the PN using a robust PN distance indicator which agrees with the published cluster distance to within the errors. We also provide preliminary estimates of basic PN properties and abundance estimates from deeper spectra that show it to be of possible Type I chemistry. This is also consistent with its estimated turn-off mass. Taken together, these findings present a powerful case for clear physical association between the PN and host cluster. Results for this association will be of considerable interest to specialists across differing astrophysical disciplines, including PNe, white dwarfs and open clusters.


Gene-environment interactions are central to the expression of obesity. The condition is strongly heritable (ie, genetic), and most of the variation in obesity levels between countries and between individuals can be explained by the effects of obesogenic environments on individual genetic susceptibilities. The nature of the obesogenic environmental influences is not clear in detail, but they correlate closely with measures of affluence. The causes of variation in genetic susceptibility are also not clearly defined, but their general nature has become clearer. The failure of genome-wide association studies or large linkage studies to identify or replicate causative genetic variants, together with the segregation of obesity-related traits in families, implicates a heterogenetic mechanism in which rare, dominantly or additively expressed genetic variants are responsible for most of common obesity. The search for rare causative variants continues with some successes, but those identified contribute very little to the overall burden and, assuming heterogenetics, there are many more to find. The time when genomic risk factors provide more information than do currently available markers, such as family history, is a long way off. Genomic studies to date have contributed little, if anything, to the prevention and treatment of common obesity and its associated disorders. This contrasts with the obvious and immediate potential implications of the well-established overall genetic basis of obesity, which have not yet been exploited in the clinical or public health arenas. Genomic studies, which have helped to define the genetic basis of common obesity mainly by exclusion, will in the future play an increasingly important role in understanding and managing obesity, but only with parallel studies of the physiological, behavioral, and economic influences. Disciplines Medicine and Health Sciences | Social and Behavioral Sciences Publication Details Jenkins, A. & Campbell, L. (2014). Future management of human obesity: understanding the meaning of genetic susceptibility. Advances in Genomics and Genetics, 4 219-232. This journal article is available at Research Online: http://ro.uow.edu.au/smhpapers/2772


The presence of cationic pollutant metals in municipal wastewater effluent is a concern because stringent discharge requirements cannot always be met with conventional treatment methods. Attempts to improve metal removal are often unsuccessful because a significant fraction of the cationic metals are complexed by the synthetic chelating agent ethylenediamine tetraacetic acid (EDTA).

To identify practical approaches for improving metal removal, an analytical method for measuring metal-EDTA complexes was used to survey metal speciation at a series of wastewater treatment plants. Following these analyses, bench-scale experiments were conducted. The survey data indicated that pollutant metal-EDTA complexes account for a significant fraction of the dissolved metals in wastewater. The bench-scale studies indicated that ferric chloride addition improves the removal of copper and zinc by approximately 20%.

To test the results of the bench-scale experiments, a full-scale experiment was conducted by interrupting chemical addition at a municipal wastewater treatment plant that normally adds ferric chloride during primary treatment. Results indicated that ferric chloride addition had a slight impact on metal speciation but no effect on metals removal. The lack of an effect was attributed to changes in metal speciation that occurred during primary treatment irrespective of ferric chloride addition.

This title belongs to WERF Research Report Series

ISBN: 9781843396949 (Print)

ISBN: 9781780404387 (eBook)