The state of roadside ditch design and performance has become a topic of concern for the Virginia Department of Transportation. Erosion failures of roadside ditches have occurred frequently enough to indicate that it may be desirable to revise the current design practice. Through the Virginia Transportation Research Council, VDOT has sponsored this research to investigate the state of design practice for these structures and to explore revisions to the design process resulting in a more economical design. To investigate the erosion problems, various VDOT personnel at each of Virginia's nine Construction Districts were interviewed with the intent to gain an understanding of roadside ditch performance in each District. When possible, field visits were made to sites experiencing erosion failure and soil samples were collected for analysis. In addition, experiences and design procedures in neighboring states were reviewed, with the objective of determining if similar problems have been experienced, and if so, how they have been addressed. The survey of other states included nine states, and a site visit to the Mount Airy District of the North Carolina Department of Transportation. A study of the literature relating to the hydraulic performance of unlined and lined ditches was also performed, with the objective of researching available stability criteria used in ditch design and determining if suitable values of Manning's n are being used in Virginia design. The results of this study presented in this thesis represent the best recommended roadside ditch design practice based on current available research. Recommendations include revisions to the current relationship of soil type and maximum allowable velocity, revisions to the application of Manning's n for various lining conditions, and suggestions to improve the overall design and construction process based on surveyed VDOT experience, surrounding states and current research. Future research will be necessary to improve the scientific bases for these recommendations.


While technologies continue to advance in different directions, there still holds a constant evolution of interdisciplinary development. Robotics and mechatronics is a successful fusion of disciplines into a unified framework that enhances the design of products and manufacturing processes.Engineering Creative Design in Robotics and Mechatronics captures the latest research developments in the subject field of robotics and mechatronics and provides relevant theoretical knowledge in this field. Providing interdisciplinary development approaches, this reference source prepares students, scientists, and professional engineers with the latest research development to enhance their skills of innovative design capabilities.


Background Glow discharge plasma (GDP) procedure is an effective method for grafting various proteins, including albumin, type I collagen, and fibronectin, onto a titanium surface. However, the behavior and impact of titanium (Ti) surface modification is yet to be unraveled. Purpose The purpose of this study is to evaluate and analyze the biological properties of fibronectin-grafted Ti surfaces treated by GDP. Materials and Methods Grade II Ti discs were initially cleaned and autoclaved to obtain original specimens. Subsequently, the specimens were GDP treated and grafted with fibronectin to form Ar-GDP (Argon GDP treatment only) and GDP-fib (fibronectin coating following GDP treatment) groups. Blood coagulation test and MG-63 cell culture were performed to evaluate the biological effects on the specimen. Results There was no significant difference between Ar-GDP and GDP-fib groups in blood compatibility analysis. While in the MTT test, cellular proliferation was benefited from the presence of fibronectin coating. The numbers of cells on Ar-GDP and GDP-fib specimens were greater than those in the original specimens after 24 h of culturing. Conclusions GDP treatment combined with fibronectin grafting favored MG-63 cell adhesion, migration, and proliferation on titanium surfaces, which could be attributed to the improved surface properties.


Background: Infective endocarditis (IE) is a serious and potentially life-threatening disease. The epidemiology, treatment options, and outcomes have changed considerably over the last two decades. The aim of the study was to describe the epidemiology, clinical characteristics, and outcomes of patients with IE in Qatar. Methods: Patients were identified from Hamad Medical Corporation hospitals' electronic records, the national referral center for the State of Qatar. We included those aged ≥ 18 years with Duke Criteria-based diagnosis of IE during the period from January 2015 to September 2017. Demographic and clinical data were retrieved. Descriptive statistics were performed, and logistic regression analysis was used to describe the relationship between patient characteristics and all-cause in-hospital mortality. All potentially relevant variables were included in the univariate analysis, while those with p < 0.1 in the univariate logistic regression model were included in the multivariate analysis. For the final model, we calculated odds ratios (OR) adjusted for each of the variables included, along with their 95% confidence intervals (95% CI). Data were analyzed using STATA software version 15 (StataCorp, College Station, Texas, USA). The study was approved by the Institutional Research Board with a waiver for informed consent. Results: Fifty-seven cases were included, of which 70% were males. The mean age was 51 years ( ± 16.8 years). Eleven (19%) were associated with prosthetic valves, and 6 (11%) with implantable cardiac devices. Fever (84%), dyspnea (46%), and heart failure (37%) were the most common presentations. Only 58% of patients had known preexisting valvular heart disease or an intracardiac device. Skin infections (10 patients, 18%) were the most prevalent portals of infection, followed by venous catheters, recent valve surgery, and implantable cardiac devices. Staphylococci were implicated in 19 (34%) and Streptococcaceae in 9 (16%) patients, whereas 21 (37%) patients were culture negative. Left-side IE (49 patients, 86%) was predominant. Acute kidney injury (AKI) (17 patients, 30%) and heart failure (11 patients, 19%) were common complications. The majority of patients received targeted antimicrobial therapy with at least two active agents. Only 9 (16%) patients underwent surgical intervention. Fourteen (25%) patients died of any cause before hospital discharge. Logistic regression analysis identified septic shock [OR 57.8, 95% CI 2.6–1360.2; p < 0.01] and AKI OR 33.9, 95% CI 2.9–398.1; p < 0.01) as the only risk factors independently associated with in-hospital mortality. Conclusion: Staphylococci are the most common microbiological cause of IE in Qatar. Surgical intervention is uncommon, and mortality is relatively high. Our findings suggest that efforts should be directed toward improving IE prevention strategies in high-risk patients, encouraging early microbiological investigations and improving medical and surgical management.


Consistent with the overall theme of this issue, my intent here is to give an overview of how genes with importance in aging can be studied by cell transplantation and also how cell transplantation can be used to deliver therapeutic gene products to patients. CELL TRANSPLANTATION In the process called cell transplantation, isolated human or animal cells are transplanted into a human patient or an experimental animal. In their new host, they become a functional part of the body, either by integrating into an existing tissue or alternatively by forming a new tissue or organ, in cooperation with host-derived connective tissue cells, blood vessels, and nerves. In my laboratory, we have applied cell transplantation techniques to the cells of the adrenal cortex (Thomas, Northrop, and Hornsby, r997; Hornsby et al.,1998), but this general overview addresses the uses and potential of cell transplantation generally, without an emphasis on any specific cell type. It is only recently that cell transplantation has been recognized as a distinct discipline. It has emerged as a synthesis of several related areas of basic science and clinical therapy First, cell transplantation extends organ and tissue transplantation and shares with those procedures the same clinical objectives-the replacement of diseased or damaged organs and tissues and the correction of metabolic or hormonal defects. For example, much effort has gone into attempts to successfully transplant pancreatic islet beta cells for the treatment of insulin-dependent diabetes (Ricordi and Starzl, 1991). A second contributing area has been ex vivo gene therapy. In this technique, genetically modified cells (derived from the patient or from another source) are transplanted as a vehicle for therapeutic gene and protein delivery, as an alternative to in vivo gene delivery by viruses or other means. Transplanted cells could be used to deliver a therapeutic protein to a site in the body where it is needed or to deliver it systemically into the circulation (Gage,1998). Third, the science and medicine of tissue engineering are closely related to cell transplantation, with the emphasis on combining cells using synthetic polymer matrices before transplantation (Larger and Vacanti, 1993). These biodegradable and biocompatible polymers serve to support the growth and function of the cells and act as a guide or scaffold for the newly formed tissue after transplantation. The first tissue engineering products are now commercially available. One example is the Apligraf human skin equivalent. Most emphasis has been on the practical aspects of cell transplantation, and the potential of the technique to answer basic science questions, has not received as much attention. Cell transplantation can be used to address questions in human physiology and biochemistry, and in the physiology of species other than the common laboratory organisms, that cannot be answered by techniques that are currently in common use. In using cell transplantation in this way, we take advantage of the same features of the technique that make it attractive for therapeutic procedures. That is, we combine the power of in vitro techniques, the growth of specialized cells in culture and genetic manipulation of cultured cells, for example, with growth of the cells in an appropriate host in vivo to form a functional tissue. The ability to construct tissues and organs from component cells enables us to address questions of cell origin, cell interactions, cell turnover, and cellular senescence within tissues. When these techniques are applied to human cells, in a suitable host animal, we can perform experiments that would be unethical and impractical in human subjects. In the experiments from my lab on transplantation of adrenocortical cells (Hornsby et al., r998), there are two critical features of importance for cell transplantation as a method to study human biology. One is the use of a clonal cell population, and the second is the replacement of the animal's own organ by the transplanted cells. …


OF DISSERTATION WOMEN OF THE APOCALPYSE: AFROSPECULATIVE FEMINIST NOVELISTS "Women of the Apocalypse: Afrospeculative Feminist Novelists," seeks to address the problematic 'Exodus narrative,' a convention that has helped shape Black American liberation politics dating back to the writings of Phyllis Wheatley. Novels by Zora Neale Hurston, Octavia Butler, and Alice Walker undermine and complicate this narrative by challenging the trope of a single charismatic male leader who leads an entire race to a utopic promised land. For these writers, the Exodus narrative is unsustainable for a number of reasons, not the least of which is because there is no room for women to operate outside of the role of supportive wives. The mode of speculative fiction is well suited to crafting counter-narratives to Exodus mythology because of its ability to place marginalized voices in the center from the stance of 'What next?' My project is a hybrid in that I combine critical theory with original poems. The prose section of each chapter contextualizes a novel and its author with regard to Exodus mythology. However, because novels can only reveal so much about character development, I identify spaces to engage and elaborate upon the conversation incited by these authors' feminist protagonists. In the tradition of Black American poets such as, Ai, Patricia Smith, Rita Dove, and Tyehimba Jess, in my own personal creative work, I regularly engage historical figures through recovering the narratives of underrepresented voices. To write in persona or limited omniscient, spotlighting an event where the reader possesses incomplete information surrounding a character's experience, the result becomes a kind of call-and-response interaction with these novels.


Our aims were to assess the role of adrenergic modulation in the hyperventilation-induced increase in colonic tone. Of 40 healthy volunteers, 12 received placebo (saline) and the remaining 28 received either clonidine, yohimbine, phenylephrine, or ritodrine. Time-frequency mapping of heart rate based on Wigner distribution assessed variations in parasympathetic and sympathetic activity during hyperventilation. Tone in the descending colon was recorded by a barostat balloon before, during, and after 5 min of hyperventilation. Heart rate spectral analysis suggested diminished sympathetic and vagal activity during hyperventilation and increased sympathetic and vagal activity after hyperventilation. Adrenergic agents influenced ( P = 0.01) the tonic response after, but not during, hyperventilation. Yohimbine reduced the increment in colonic tone after hyperventilation compared with saline ( P < 0.05) and clonidine ( P = 0.002); phenylephrine and ritodrine had no effects. Different mechanisms modulate the increase in colonic tone during and after hyperventilation. Yohimbine attenuates the increase in colonic tone after hyperventilation probably by enhancing inhibitory sympathetic input to the colon.


A previously described vector model of multiphase separations is dramatically simplified and applied to the problem of optimization of tandem column ensembles using pressure-tunable column selectivity. In the model, retention values for a set of target compounds on the two different stationary phases used in the column ensemble are plotted on a two-dimensional retention plane. Retention values for each mixture component are expressed in units of hold-up time for the two different columns. Every mixture component occupies a single point on the retention plane. The orthogonal coordinates of a point represent retention for that component on the individual phases. A phase fraction axis is defined from the origin of the retention plane. The angle that this axis makes with the orthogonal retention axes is uniquely defined by the fractional contributions to the total hold-up time from the individual columns. Coordinates along this axis define the ensemble retention using the column combination. Points on the retention plane corresponding to the mixture components are connected pairwise by separation vectors. The geometric center of each separation vector is connected to the retention origin by a locator vector. This pair of vectors provides all necessary information regarding the separation of the corresponding pair of mixture components using the chosen pair of stationary phases in the column ensemble. The separation of a peak pair using a particular column combination (holdup time fraction) is found by projection of the separation vector onto the phase fraction axis corresponding to the holdup time fraction. The relative resolution of the peak pair is found as the ratio of the separation vector projection length to the locator vector projection length. Minimum values of relative resolution considering all non-redundant peak pairs then are plotted versus the rotation angle of the phase fraction axis. The resulting window diagram identifies the holdup time fraction giving the best relative resolution of the most difficult to separate component pair.


The social and environmental benefits of establishing E. globulus plantations in south west Australia on previously cleared farmland are reviewed. Due to their sensitivity to drought, we study how this risk may affect the return on plantation investments. Productivity reductions of up to 40% in both rotations did not result in an internal rate of return lower than the threshold 10%. These results assume that growers could sell into the international market and receive export parity prices. If this case, large reductions in plantation productivity should not discourage investment and the reported social benefits should not be greatly affected.


There is a surprising lack of empirical research into user interaction with the web. This paper reports the results of an analysis of four months of logged data describing web use. The results update and extend earlier studies carried out in 1994 and 1995. We found that web page revisitation is a much more prevalent activity than previously reported (approximately 80% of pages have been previously visited by the user), that most pages are visited for a surprisingly short period of time, and that users maintain large (and possibly overwhelming) bookmark collections.


From the earliest sound films to the present, American cinema has represented African Americans as decidedly musical. Disintegrating the Musical tracks and analyzes this history of musical representations of African Americans, from blacks and whites in blackface to black-cast musicals to jazz shorts, from sorrow songs to show tunes to bebop and beyond.

Arthur Knight focuses on American film's classic sound era, when Hollywood studios made eight all-black-cast musicals—a focus on Afro-America unparalleled in any other genre. It was during this same period that the first black film stars—Paul Robeson, Louis Armstrong, Lena Horne, Harry Belafonte, Dorothy Dandridge—emerged, not coincidentally, from the ranks of musical performers. That these films made so much of the connection between African Americans and musicality was somewhat ironic, Knight points out, because they did so in a form (song) and a genre (the musical) celebrating American social integration, community, and the marriage of opposites—even as the films themselves were segregated and played before even more strictly segregated audiences.

Disintegrating the Musical covers territory both familiar— Show Boat , Stormy Weather , Porgy and Bess —and obscure—musical films by pioneer black director Oscar Micheaux, Lena Horne's first film The Duke Is Tops , specialty numbers tucked into better-known features, and lost classics like the short Jammin' the Blues . It considers the social and cultural contexts from which these films arose and how African American critics and audiences responded to them. Finally, Disintegrating the Musical shows how this history connects with the present practices of contemporary musical films like O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Bamboozled .


Atbstract. Variations in DNAsequences flanking the insulin gene were studied in relation to noninsulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM) in 87 unrelated Pima Indians at least 35 yr of age. DNAwas isolated from nuclei of peripheral blood leukocytes and digested with restriction endonucleases. Less variation in this region was found in Pima Indians than in other racial groups previously studied. Only two classes of alleles (classes 1 and 3) were found, and there was virtually no variation within classes. At least one class 3 allele was found in 47% of the 38 nondiabetic subjects and in 37% of the 49 with NIDDM(odds ratio = 0.65, P = 0.4, 95% confidence interval for the odds ratio = 0.25 to 1.67). Homozygosity for class 3 alleles, however, was found only in diabetics. There were no differences according to genotype in obesity, fasting or postload glucose or insulin concentrations, or in the relationships between insulin and glucose concentrations. 61% (11/18) of the diabetics with a class 3 allele were receiving drug treatment for diabetes compared with only 26% (8/31) of diabetics without a class 3 allele (P = 0.03). The insulin gene polymorphism probably plays no important role in the genesis of NIDDM in Pima Indians, nor does it influence the glucose or insulin concentrations or their relationship to each other, but the class 3 allele, especially when homozygous in this


By the mid-nineteenth-century, 'public opinion' emerged as a new form of authority in Upper Canada. Contemporaries came to believe that the best answer to common questions arose from deliberation among private individuals. Older conceptions of government, sociability and the relationship between knowledge and power were jettisoned for a new image of Upper Canada as a deliberative democracy. .The Capacity to Judge. asks what made widespread public debate about common issues possible; why it came to be seen as desirable, even essential; and how it was integrated into Upper Canada's constitutional and social self-image. Drawing on an international body of literature indebted to Jurgen Habermas and based on extensive research in period newspapers, Jeffrey L. McNairn argues that voluntary associations and the press created a reading public capable of reasoning on matters of state, and that the dynamics of political conflict invested that public with final authority. He traces how contemporaries grappled with the consequences as they scrutinized parliamentary, republican and radical options for institutionalizing public opinion. The Capacity to Judge concludes with a case study of deliberative democracy in action that serves as a sustained defense of the type of intellectual history the book as a whole exemplifies.


Stackelberg security games form the backbone of systems like ARMOR, IRIS and PROTECT, which are in regular use by the Los Angeles International Police, US Federal Air Marshal Service and the US Coast Guard respectively. An understanding of the runtime required by algorithms that power such systems is critical to furthering the application of game theory to other real-world domains. This paper identifies the concept of the deployment-to-saturation ratio in random Stackelberg security games, and shows that problem instances for which this ratio is 0.5 are computationally harder than instances with other deployment-to-saturation ratios for a wide range of different equilibrium computation methods, including (i) previously published different MIP algorithms, and (ii) different underlying solvers and solution mechanisms. This finding has at least two important implications. First, it is important for new algorithms to be evaluated on the hardest problem instances. We show that this has often not been done in the past, and introduce a publicly available benchmark suite to facilitate such comparisons. Second, we provide evidence that this computationally hard region is also one where optimization would be of most benefit to security agencies, and thus requires significant attention from researchers in this area. Furthermore, we use the concept of phase transitions to better understand this computationally hard region. We define a decision problem related to security games, and show that the probability that this problem has a solution exhibits a phase transition as the deployment-to-saturation ratio crosses 0.5. We also demonstrate that this phase transition is invariant to changes both in the domain and the domain representation, and that the phase transition point corresponds to the computationally hardest instances.


Adult infaunal clams (Macoma balthica) persist at low densities in sandy and muddy habitats in Chesapeake Bay, USA, despite intense predation by blue crabs Callinectes sapidus; another infaunal soft-shelled clam (Mya arenaria) only persists in sandy habitats. We hypothesized that the persistence of M. balthica and M. arenaria in certain habitats was due to blue crabs exhibiting a type 111 (sigmoid) functional response whereby the risk of mortality is reduced at low clam densities. Laboratory experiments assessed functional responses (prey consumption predator-' as a function of prey density) of large male blue crabs to 6 densities of M. balthica as a function of sediment type (sand and mud) and tank size (54.6 cm and 97.2 cm diameter). These results were compared with previous experiments with M. arenana. Abundances of blue crabs, M. balthica, and M. arenaria were measured 4 to 10 times yr-l from 1979 to 1986 at both sand and mud stations in the mesohaline zone of Chesapeake Bay. Laboratory functional response results were then related to seasonal habitat-specific abundance patterns of M. balthica and M. arenaria in the field. With the exception of M. balthica in mud, abundances of M. arenaria and M. balthica decreased as blue crab abundance increased during the summer. When blue crabs reached their peak abundances in July. M. balthica was predominant in mud whereas M. arenaria numbers dropped to zero in mud and persisted in sand at similar low densities to M. balthica in sand. In the laboratory, blue crabs exhibited density-dependent (type 111) functional responses to M. balthica Irrespective of sediment type and tank size, even though mortality rates of clams were significantly higher in sand than mud. Differences in habitat-specific burial depth probably accounted for the differential survival of M. balthica in sand and mud. Thus, M. balthlca obtained a relative refuge from blue crab predation at low densities similar to those in the field near the end of the seasonal period of active predation. Previous laboratory experiments with blue crabs indicated a type 111 functional response to M. arenaria in sand and an inversely density-dependent type I1 response to M. arenaria in mud. Thus, the collective laboratory and field evidence from this study and others strongly suggests that blue crabs are critical determinants of speclesand habitat-specific prey persistence in marine soft-bottom communities, and that analysis of predator functional and aggregative responses may help to explaln much of the spatial variation of clam abundance patterns in the mesohal~ne zone of Chesapeake Bay.


The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) that appeared in 2019 gave rise to a major global health crisis that is still topping global health, socioeconomic, and intervention program agendas. Although the outbreak of COVID-19 has had substantial and devastating impacts on developed countries, the countries of the Global South share a higher proportion of the epidemic's effects as shown particularly in morbidity and mortality rates in low-income countries. Modeling the effects of underlying factors and disease mortality is essential to plan effective control strategies for disease transmission and risks. The relationship between COVID-19 mortality rates and sociodemographic and health determinants can highlight various epidemic fatality risks. In this research, geographic information systems (GIS) and a multilayer perceptron (MLP) artificial neural network (ANN) were adopted to model and examine variations in COVID-19 mortality rates in the Global South. The model's performance was tested using statistical measures of mean square error (MSE), root mean square error (RMSE), mean bias error (MBE), and the coefficient of determination (R 2). The findings indicated that the most important variables in explaining spatial mortality rate variations were the size of the elderly (sixty-five and older) population, accessibility to handwashing facilities, and hospital beds per 1,000 population. Mapping the explanatory variables and estimated mortality rates and determining the importance of each variable in explaining the spatial variation of COVID-19 death rates across countries of the Global South can shed light on how public health care and demographic structures can offer policymakers invaluable guidelines to planning effective intervention strategies.


A fully integrated modeling and analysis toolkit, which facilitates multi-perspective knowledge capturing, sharing and reusing, is necessary for today's enterprises to meet the challenges of the ever more competitive global marketplace. We present a suite of software tools, designed and developed by Knowledge Based Systems, Inc., that can generate integrated solutions to complicated enterprise analysis including business process reengineering, activity based costing and training. We start by providing a high level conceptual framework in which the individual tools with their roles and interrelations are presented. We then introduce each tool that makes up the enterprise modeling and analysis toolkit in detail. The tutorial focuses on the ease and the user friendliness of: capturing domain knowledge into interchangeable multi-perspective models; automatically generating and executing stochastic and deterministic analysis models from these multi-perspective models; and publishing enterprise modeling and analysis results on the Web.


In this paper, a probabilistic model is introduced to obtain feature-based likelihood ratios from linguistically-constrained formant-based i-vectors in a NIST SRE task. Linguistically-constrained formant-based i-vectors summarize both the static and dynamic information of formant frequencies in the occurrences of a given linguistic unit in a speech recording. In this work, a two-covariance model is applied to these "higher-level" features in order to obtain likelihood ratios through a probabilistic framework. While the performance of the individual linguistically-constrained systems are not comparable to that of a state-of-the-art cepstral-based system, calibration loss is low enough, providing informative likelihood ratios that can be directly used, for instance, in forensic applications. Fur-thermore, this procedure avoids the need for further calibration steps, which usually require additional datasets. Finally, the fusion of several linguistically-constrained systems greatly im-proves the overall performance, achieving very remarkable results for a system solely based on formant features. Testing on the English-only trials of the core condition of the NIST 2006 SRE (and using only NIST SRE 2004 and 2005 data for background and development, respectively), we report equal error rates of 8.47% and 9.88% for male and female speakers respectively, using only formant frequencies as speaker discriminative information.


The food we eat is a key determinant of our health and the monitoring of nutritional status is an essential element of monitoring public health. On the island of Ireland (IOI) there has been a wealth of nutrition data collected contributing to the nutrition surveillance picture, although no formal nutrition surveillance system currently exists in either jurisdiction.
This report outlines recent and current activities contributing to nutrition surveillance on IOI and makes recommendations for the future. This is with a view to maximising the use of economic resources and harnessing and maintaining expertise in this important domain using a joint programming approach.
This work was facilitated by a subgroup of safefood's Advisory Committee in 2011/12.


By Late Cretaceous or early Tertiary time, the diversification and proliferation of angiosperm-deciduous ecosystems resulted in higher rates of mineral weathering. This increase in the global average weathering rate would have caused a decrease in atmospheric carbon dioxide and, hence, global cooling. The magnitude of this decrease is quantitatively explored here by developing a formulation for global weathering which combines ecosystems that differ in their fractional global coverage and intrinsic rates of weathering. Incorporating this formulation into models—specifically, several previously developed global steady-state models of the geochemical cycle of carbon between the atmosphere and carbonate rocks—gives results that show signifi-cant global cooling from the evolution of the angiosperm-deciduous ecosystems. This cooling may vary from a few degrees up to 10°C. In this way, deciduous ecosystems with high rates of mineral weathering could have contributed to the evolution during the past 100 m.y. of a cooler Earth and thus were a factor in producing conditions that enhanced their global proliferation.


Background Neonatal screening and early intervention for phenylketonuria (PKU) now results in normal development into adulthood for most patients. High maternal phenylalanine levels can be devastating for offspring with reports of 70% risk of microcephaly and 15% congenital heart defects in those with phenylalanine levels greater than 1000 µmol/l in pregnancy. The 2004 consensus for the diagnosis and management of PKU, recommends that women should aim for phenylalanine concentrations 60–250 µmol/l prepregnancy and throughout pregnancy. Methods A retrospective audit of all pregnancies of mothers with PKU in a single regional clinic. Results Between 2000 and 2009, The Newcastle PKU clinic had 42 females of reproductive age, of whom 16 conceived a total 20 pregnancies. Nine pregnancies resulted in normal healthy infants. One child has epilepsy. One congenital cataracts and one child was born with severe congenital cardiac abnormalities and died at 2 weeks. There were four early spontaneous abortions and four terminations of pregnancy. Preconceptual phenyalanine levels of <250 µmol/l were achieved in 8/20 pregnancies. All pregnancy resulting in spontaneous abortion or termination had phenylalanine >1000 µmol/l at presentation. Phenylalanine levels <300 µmol/l were achieved by 10 weeks gestation and maintained throughout pregnancy in 11/12 pregnancies that went to term, of which nine resulted in normal outcome. Conclusions Despite counselling about the need for strict prepregnancy dietary control, most women conceived with above recommended phenylalanine levels. Intensive treatment to lower phenylalanine concentrations to target by 10 weeks, results in normal infants in most cases but PKU associated pregnancies remain high risk.


Making a medical diagnosis in an elderly person presenting with first time psychiatric symptoms can be challenging. A 61 year old lady presented with 4 years history of tactile hallucinations in her legs and delusions of persecution, and 2 weeks history of depression and mild cognitive impairment. There were no other significant physical findings, except for dysarthria and fine bilateral hand tremors. As patient had no prior psychiatric history, she was investigated for differential diagnoses of late-onset schizophrenia, psychotic depression and early dementia. A thorough investigation for concomitant medical illnesses was done which revealed low serum calcium, high serum phosphate and relatively low serum parathyroid hormone levels. A diagnosis of Fahr's syndrome (FS) was made based on history, hematological findings of idiopathic hypoparathyroidism and bilateral basal ganglia calcifications (BGC) on neuroimaging. Treatment of FS is non-specific and mainly symptomatic. This patient improved with treatment comprising antidepressant, antipsychotic and calcium supplement.


We find that adding a measure of market jump volatility risk to a regression of excess bond returns on the term structure of forward rates nearly doubles the R2 of the regression. Our market jump volatility measure is based on the realized jumps identified from high-frequency stock market returns using the bi-power variation technique. The significant enhancement of bond return predictability is robust to different forecasting horizons, to using non-overlapping returns and to the choice of different window sizes in computing the jump volatility. This market jump volatility factor also crowds out the price-dividend ratio in explaining much of the countercyclical movement in bond risk premia. We argue that this finding provides support for the unspanned stochastic volatility hypothesis according to which the conditional distribution of excess bond returns is affected by state variables that are not in the span of the term structure of yields and forward rates. JEL Classification Numbers: G12, G14, E43, C22.


Systems powered by artificial intelligence are being developed to be more user-friendly by communicating with users in a progressively "human-like" conversational way. Chatbots, also known as dialogue systems, interactive conversational agents, or virtual agents are an example of such systems used in a wide variety of applications ranging from customer support in the business domain to companionship in the healthcare sector. It is becoming increasingly important to develop chatbots that can best respond to the personalized needs of their users, so that they can be as helpful to the user as possible in a real human way. This paper investigates and compares three popular existing chatbots API offerings and then propose and develop a voice interactive and multilingual chatbot that can effectively respond to users' mood, tone, and language using IBM Watson Assistant, Tone Analyzer, and Language Translator. The chatbot was evaluated using a use case that was targeted at responding to users' needs regarding exam stress based on university students survey data generated using Google Forms. The results of measuring the chatbot effectiveness at analyzing responses regarding exam stress indicate that the chatbot responding appropriately to the user queries regarding how they are feeling about exams 76.5%. The chatbot could also be adapted for use in other application areas such as student info-centers, government kiosks, and mental health support systems.


Chronic Kidney disease is more common in Indian population today. Hence the need of medications for chronic kidney disease also increased now a days. This study is designed to investigate the role of Prebiotics and probiotics in the management of chronic kidney disease patient. Oral administration of a probiotic formulation of selected microbial strains may extend renoprotection via intraintestinal extraction of toxic waste solutes in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) . The idea behind the research is to prevent the development of key damaging uremic toxins by targeting the process of bacterial protein fermentation in the gut. People with kidney disease have been shown to have a disturbed gut flora, which promotes the increased production of those harmful toxins. By supplementing patients with a specific combination of bacteria (probiotics) and beneficial fibre to support the growth of the good bacteria (prebiotics), it improve the health of the gut, suppressing the growth of bad bacteria and therefore decreasing the production of the toxins. In turn this should assist in delaying further kidney disease progression and improve heart health


[1] Atmospheric CO2 and China's climate have changed greatly during 1961–2000. The influence of increased CO2 and changing climate on the carbon cycle of the terrestrial ecosystems in China is still unclear. In this article we used a process-based ecosystem model, Biome-BGC, to assess the effects of changing climate and elevated atmospheric CO2 on terrestrial China's carbon cycle during two time periods: (1) the present (1961–2000) and (2) a future with projected climate change under doubled CO2 (2071–2110). The effects of climate change alone were estimated by driving Biome-BGC with a fixed CO2 concentration and changing climate, while the CO2 fertilization effects were calculated as the difference between the results driven by both increasing CO2 and changing climate and those of variable climate alone. Model simulations indicate that during 1961–2000 at the national scale, changes in climate reduced carbon storage in China's ecosystems, but increasing CO2 compensated for these adverse effects of climate change, resulting in an overall increase in the carbon storage of China's ecosystems despite decreases in soil carbon. The interannual variability of the carbon cycle was associated with climate variations. Regional differences in climate change produced differing regional carbon uptake responses. Spatially, reductions in carbon in vegetation and soils and increases in litter carbon were primarily caused by climate change in most parts of east China, while carbon in vegetation, soils, and litter increased for much of west China. Under the future scenario (2071–2110), with a doubling CO2, China will experience higher precipitation and temperature as predicted by the Hadley Centre HadCM3 for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment. The concomitant doubling of CO2 will continue to counteract the negative effects of climate change on carbon uptake in the future, leading to an increase in carbon storage relative to current levels. This study highlights the role of CO2 fertilization in the carbon budget of China's ecosystems, although future studies should include other important processes such as land use change, human management (e.g., fertilization and irrigation), environmental pollution, etc.


Cook led three famous expeditions to the Pacific Ocean between 1768 and 1779. In voyages that ranged from the Antarctic circle to the Arctic Sea, Cook charted Australia and the whole coast of New Zealand, and brought back detailed descriptions of the natural history of the Pacific. Accounts based on Cook's journals were issued at the time, but it was not until this century that the original journals were published in Beaglehole's definitive edition. "The Journals" tells the story of these voyages as Cook wanted it to be told, radiating the ambition, courage and skill which enabled him to carry out an unrivalled series of expeditions in dangerous waters.


Extracted from text ... 12 January 2006 Moneyweb's PERSONAL FINANCE
INVESTMENT BASICS
The first-time investor's
guide to the JSE
The beginning of a new year is a good time to learn
something new. If you have never invested in shares
before, this second extract from Alec Hogg's book,
"Shares: A Buyer's Guide", will show you what's
involved
What is an exchange?
An exchange provides a place for
investors to buy and sell securities
in listed companies which have
come to the exchange to raise
capital for their businesses.
Companies do this on the primary
market, while the investors
already owning shares trade on ..


We analyze a lifetime-broadened four-state four-wave-mixing (FWM) scheme in the ultraslow propagation regime and show that the generated FWM field can acquire the same group velocity and pulse shape as those of an ultraslow pump field. We show that a new type of induced transparency resulted from multiphoton destructive interference that significantly reduced the pump field loss. Such induced transparency based on multphoton destructive interference may have important applications in other nonlinear optical processes.


Interview in six sessions, in December 1994-January 1995 and February 2000, conducted by Shirley K. Cohen with Leon T. Silver, W. M. Keck Foundation Professor for Resource Geology, emeritus, at Caltech. This lengthy interview begins with discussion of family background in Russia and Poland, youth in New York and Connecticut, and beginning of higher education at Colorado School of Mines, 1942. Recalls participation in navy V-12 program at U. of Colorado; degree in civil engineering and entry into Naval Civil Engineer Corps; decision to resume work in geology at U. of New Mexico after discharge in 1946; master's degree 1948; entry into PhD program in geology at Caltech, fall 1948. Recalls Caltech geology division in 1948; its history and personnel to that time. Changes following WWII: Robert P. Sharp becomes chairman; recruitment of Harrison Brown to Caltech; beginning of geochemistry studies; Silver assigned to Brown's group; group members Samuel Epstein, Clair Patterson and Charles McKinney; Patterson's work on age of the Earth. Funding for new state-of-the-art geochemistry labs; McKinney builds new mass spectrometers. Interlude concerning personal history. Continues on work with Harrison Brown group, 1950s; recruitment of Gerald Wasserburg, 1955; appointments of Clarence Allen and Frank Press. Silver's work on radiogenic lead systems. Beginnings of planetary science at Caltech; Brown's study of meteorites; appointment of Bruce Murray. Decision to choose planetary science over marine sciences; subsequent loss of Frank Press. US decision to put a man on the moon; proposals to NASA to do lunar-sample analysis; Caltech dominates first lunar science conference (Houston, January 1970); Silver's training of Apollo astronauts in geology, especially Harrison "Jack" Schmitt (Caltech BS, 1957). Recalls 1971 San Fernando earthquake's impact on geology. Describes Grand Canyon trips for Caltech Associates and trustees involving Eugene Shoemaker and Silver; other alumni trips; establishing the R. P. Sharp divisional chair. Notes work outside of Caltech: USGS, NASA, Geological Society of America, National Research Council. Election to National Academy of Sciences, 1974; other awards. Comments on Caltech presidents DuBridge, Brown, Goldberger, Everhart; provosts Bacher, Christy, Vogt. Remarks on LIGO [Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory] and projects of special status. Comments on geology division chairmen. In final session, Silver describes expedition with Gene Shoemaker to find Indian Sipapu [hole where the Hopi people emerged onto Earth] on the Little Colorado River; description of geological feature housing Sipapu; obtaining and bringing sample of Sipapu water back to Caltech's geology division.


Conservation biology uses various tools including spatial ecology and molecular ecology to provide better understanding of species that can be used to support and design effective conservation strategies. Many wetland bird species in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) are poorly known, and we lack detailed knowledge about their breeding ecology, spatial distribution and genetic differentiation. The first objective of my PhD research was to investigate the parental behaviour of an understudied endemic shorebird to the Middle East, the Crab Plover Dromas ardeola to record parental behaviour at the burrows over a 24-hour period. Since adult males and females look identical, I used molecular markers for sex determination. Molecular sexing was conducted using two different markers applied for 66 Crab Plover blood samples. I demonstrated that both males and females fed chicks, and that females brought food to chicks more frequently than did males (Chapter 2). The second objective was to investigate the breeding distribution of Crab Plovers along the Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia and to compare the results with the last comprehensive survey conducted in 1996. I showed that the Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia has approximately 35% of the Arabian breeding population of Crab Plovers. The major threats to this species along the Red Sea coast were also discussed (Chapter 3). The third objective was to model the spatial distribution of 22 wetland bird species along the Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia using maximum entropy (MaxEnt) based on occurrence data and 10 environmental variables and then to determine sites with high species richness. This analysis identified 17 areas predicted to be suitable for supporting high species richness. I recommended using this model of areas with high wetland bird species richness as a guide for monitoring and surveys to inform conservation strategies in the Red Sea region of the KSA (Chapter 4). The fourth objective was to use microsatellite markers to investigate the genetics and morphometric differentiations of a wide-spread shorebird species, the Kentish Plover, between islands and mainland sites. The main result of the latter investigation was that breeding populations are genetically and morphometrically differentiated between mainland sites and islands, as well as between different archipelagos. This finding calls for a reconsideration of the current conservation status of this species (Chapter 5). Finally, my PhD research has generated several research lines that warrant further investigation (Chapter 6).


All-trans-retinoic acid (RA) is a potent inhibitor of leukemia cell proliferation and induces differentiation of acute promyelocytic leukemia cells in vitro and in vivo. For RA to induce its biological effects in target cells, binding to specific retinoic acid nuclear receptors is required. The resulting complexes bind to RA-responsive elements (RAREs) in the promoters of RA-inducible genes to initiate gene transcription and to generate protein products that mediate the biological effects of RA. In this report, we provide evidence that a member of the protein kinase C (PKC) family of proteins, PKCδ, is activated during RA treatment of the NB-4 and HL-60 acute myeloid leukemia cell lines as well as the MCF-7 breast cancer cell line. Such RA-dependent phosphorylation was also observed in primary acute promyelocytic leukemia cells and resulted in activation of the kinase domain of PKCδ. In studies aimed at understanding the functional relevance of PKCδ in the induction of RA responses, we found that pharmacological inhibition of PKCδ (but not of other PKC isoforms) diminished RA-dependent gene transcription via RAREs. On the other hand, overexpression of a constitutively active form of the kinase strongly enhanced RA-dependent gene transcription via RAREs. Gel shift assays and chromatin immunoprecipitation studies demonstrated that PKCδ associated with retinoic acid receptor-α and was present in an RA-inducible protein complex that bound to RAREs. Pharmacological inhibition of PKCδ activity abrogated the induction of cell differentiation and growth inhibition of NB-4 blast cells, demonstrating that its function is required for such effects. Altogether, our data provide strong evidence that PKCδ is activated in an RA-dependent manner and plays a critical role in the generation of the biological effects of RA in malignant cells.


Introduction: Iron-deficiency anemia (IDA) is quite common in female adolescents and adults worldwide. Despite the higher prevalence of IDA, there is a paucity of research in finding its prevalence and potential causes in young Saudi female population. Thus, the aim of this study was to determine the prevalence and possible causes of IDA in young female medical students and search for risk factors in the studied group. Materials and Methods: One hundred and twenty female students from Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University were selected by randomized sampling whose blood samples were taken to measure their hemoglobin (Hb) and serum ferritin levels. According to the World Health Organization criteria, individuals with Hb <12 g/dL and ferritin <15 ng/mL were considered anemic. The sociodemographic, gynecological, and dietary data were collected from all the respondents with the help of a well-designed 15 items questionnaire. The association between IDA and the potential risk factors was found through Fishers' exact test or Chi-square test. Results: Among the studied group, 38.3% of total population were anemic. Mean Hb ± standard deviation (SD) was found to be 12.6 ± 1.3 and mean ferritin ± SD was 18.9 ± 5.2. No statistically significant correlation (P > 0.05) was found between IDA and the background, gynecological history, and dietary habits of the anemic participants. Conclusions: The higher prevalence rate of anemia among Saudi female medical students (38.3%) was similar to the earlier reports of the Gulf region. Considering the higher ratio of anemic students, iron supplements should be prescribed to the affected youngsters to improve their Hb level.


Most Americans are more aware of the workings of the federal government than of their own state government. But these laboratories of democracy constitute perhaps the most creative and successful component of the American political experiment. Like each of the states, Tennessee state government has a distinct history and a political culture that reflects that history. This book places Tennessee s modern political institutions in the context of the history and personalities that formed them. They pay special attention to the period after 1978, when three governors left a lasting impression on the direction and culture of the state government. Separate chapters examine the legislative, executive, and judicial branches, explaining how and why Tennessee s political culture differs from other states. The book also explores the ways in which education, health care, corrections, and economic development define much of the government agenda. Additional chapters on the media, political campaigns, and local government provide a backdrop that elucidates more fully how the state government functions. The authors profile many of the personalities who have shaped the state s political agenda. Among these are longtime Senate Democratic Speaker John Wilder; his close ally, Senate Republican Leader Ben Atchley; House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh, son of a Lebanese immigrant; and Bill Snodgrass, who served as State Comptroller for forty-seven years. The book explains how each of these individuals related to three Tennessee governors, Republicans Lamar Alexander and Don Sundquist and Democrat Ned McWherter, whose administrations presided over the state s greatest period of growth and prosperity. Illustrated with photographs and tables, and featuring anecdotal sidebars that illuminate key issues, this book will become the standard text on Tennessee state government and politics for years to come. The Authors: William Lyons is a professor of political science at the University of Tennessee and coauthor of such books as American Government: Politics and Political Culture. John M. Scheb II is a professor of political science and director of the Social Science Research Institute at the University of Tennessee and coauthor of American Constitutional Law, among other books. In partnership with Dr. Lyons, he provides campaign consulting for political candidates and applied survey research for businesses and organizations. Billy Stair is director of communication and community outreach at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He served for eighteen years in the legislative and executive branches of state government, including eight years as senior policy advisor to the Governor. "


Since the discovery of the giant electrocaloric effect in PbZr0.95Ti0.05O3, the electrocaloric effect of ferroelectrics has received increasing research interest and has been demonstrated to have great potential for cooling application. For successful implementation and commercialization of electrocaloric refrigeration, it is necessary to reveal the mechanism and the factors influencing the electrocaloric effect.

The general goal of this thesis is to develop computational methods for evaluating and understanding the electrocaloric effect in complex ferroelectric materials and to derive optimization strategies with respect to the caloric cycle and the materials.

For evaluating the electrocaloric effect, two methods are developed. One is based on a thermodynamical analytical model with the entropy analysis using the Landau theory and the work loss associated with irreversibility. This allows for a quick calculation of the temperature change on the basis of thermodynamics. The other method is based on the strict enforcement of energy conservation under adiabatic conditions and is implemented in the framework of lattice-based Monte-Carlo microcanonical simulations using a novel Ginzburg-Landau type effective Hamiltonian. Using this method the electrocaloric effect in complex materials can be explicitly interpreted on the domain structure level, and by adjusting the Hamiltonian it can be applied to study complex materials such as relaxors and ferroelectrics with defect dipoles.

Based on Monte-Carlo simulations and experimental measurements, an improved thermodynamic cycle is validated, where the cooling effect is enhanced by applying a reversed electric field. In comparison with conventional adiabatic cooling by on-off cycles of the external electric field, applying a reversed field can enhance the cooling efficiency by more than 20% in standard ferroelectrics and also relaxor ferroelectrics, like Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)0.71Ti0.29O3. The optimal reversed field corresponds to the shoulder of the P-E loop, which is thermodynamically explained and quantitatively determined by the analytical model based on the entropy calculation. It signifies in general the importance of considering irreversible process in the electrocaloric cycles.

By considering oxygen vacancy-acceptor associates by fixed local dipoles, simulation results demonstrate that defect dipoles have a significant influence on the electrocaloric effect in acceptor doped BaTiO3. In particular, defect dipoles anti-parallel to the external field can lead to abnormal electrocaloric features like inverse effect and double peaks, which stem from the delicate interplay of internal and external fields and are systematically explained by the domain structure evolution and related entropy analysis. The results are in good agreement to those from Molecular-Dynamics simulations employing an ab initio based effective Hamiltonian. By making use of the inverse electrocaloric effect in the presence of defect dipoles, improved electrocaloric cycles are proposed with enhanced cooling effect.

Generic effective Hamiltonian models are presented for relaxors based on the random field theory, and the corresponding direct electrocaloric calculations reveal that the presence of random fields reduces the entropy variation in an electrocaloric cycle by pinning local polarization. With increasing strength or density of the random fields, the electrocaloric peak shifts to a lower temperature. The effective temperature range becomes wider, but the temperature variation is reduced. The dielectric and electrocaloric properties of the model solid solution BaZrxTi1-xO3 are also simulated by a composition-sensitive effective Hamiltonian, which differentiates the polar Ti-occupied sites from the nonpolar Zr-occupied sites. The model is verified by corresponding experimental measurements. Based on systematic simulations, distinct regimes of ferroelectrics, relaxors, polar clusters, and paraelectric phases are identified sequentially as the Zr-concentration increases. The correlation between the internal random fields induced by the composition fluctuation and the state regimes demonstrates the fundamental role of random fields in relaxors.


Alien Chic provides a cultural history of the alien since the 1950s, asking ourselves why our attitudes to aliens have shifted from fear to affection, and what this can tell us about how we now see ourselves and others.

Neil Badmington explores our relationship with aliens, inscribed in films such as The War of the Worlds, Mars Attacks!, Mission to Mars and Independence Day; and how thinkers such as Descartes, Barthes, Freud, Lyotard and Derrida have conceptualised what it means to be human (and post-human).

Alien Chic examines the the concept of posthumanism in an age when the lines between what is human and what is non-human are increasingly blurred by advances in science and technology, for example genetic cloning and engineering, and the development of AI and cyborgs.

Questioning whether our current embracing of all things 'alien' - in the form of extraterrestrial gadgets or abduction narratives, for instance - stems from a desire to reaffirm ourselves as 'human', this is an original and thought-provoking contribution to the study of posthumanism.


This article responds to two articles by Professor John Yoo appearing in the same volume. Professor Yoo maintains that treaties, either categorically or presumptively, have the same status in the United States as in the United Kingdom, where they lack the force of domestic law, and hence are not judicially enforceable, until implemented by statute. This response argues that Yoo's thesis contradicts the text of the Constitution, which declares treaties to be the 'law of the land.' The response notes, further, that Professor Yoo's reliance on the ratification debates to read the Supremacy Clause's reference to treaties out of the Constitution rests on an undefended and implausible version of originalism which regards as binding a supposed agreement reached by Federalists and Anti-Federalists at certain ratifying conventions to read the Constitution in a way that conflicts with the text. The response goes on to explain that, in any event, Yoo's thesis cannot be squared with longstanding precedent, and that Yoo's claim that his thesis is supported by the Constitution's structural commitments is question-begging and unpersuasive.


Regular expression matching is a central task in several networking (and search) applications and has been accelerated on a variety of parallel architectures. All solutions are based on finite automata (either in deterministic or non-deterministic form), and mostly focus on effective memory representations for such automata. Recently, a handful of work has proposed efficient regular expression matching designs for GPUs; however, most of them aim at achieving good performance on small datasets. Nowadays, practical solutions must support the increased size and complexity of real world datasets. In this work, we explore the deployment and optimization of different GPU designs of regular expression matching engines, focusing on large datasets containing a large number of complex patterns.


An electrolytic Copper Solution (ECS) was electrolyzed using platinum electrodes. Copper was obtained in solid form. In order to precipitate Cd(II), Bi(III), As(III), Sb(III) and the rest of the Cu(II) ions, H2S gas was passed through the remaining solution. The remaining solution was evaporated to obtain metal sulphates. The sample containing metal sulphates was roasted at temperatures between 550 and 800°C. Cobalt, nickel and zinc in the solid sample remained in the form of metal sulphates, while the iron in the sample was converted into Fe2O3. This solid sample was dissolved in water and filtered in order to crystallize the NiSO4. As a result of crystallization, a maximum yield of 86.2% was obtained. The solid containing metal sulphides (CuS, CdS, Bi2S3 and Sb2S3) was roasted at 600°C for 3 hours. The roasted sample was dissolved in water and filtered. It was determined that the conversion of CuS into CuSO4 occurred, together with the conversion of CdS and Bi2S3 into CdO and Bi2O3. The samples containing CdO and Bi2O3 were then leached with 0.5 M H2SO4 solution at 50°C for one hour. The extraction yield was 97%.


The problem of cross talk in image-bearing wavelength-multiplexed holograms was raised recently [A. Yariv, in Digest of Conference on Nonlinear Optics (Optical Society of America, Washington, D.C., 1992), postdeadline paper E-2]. In the limit of a large aperture (lens, crystal) it is shown that the cross talk is independent of the information content. The reduction of the hologram volume is shown to introduce interpixel as well as interpage cross talk.


Skilled managers of conflict need to continuously engage in self-reflection and need to be constantly open to feedback. According to Kolb's experiential learning theory, the important stages of learning are experience, reflection on practice and reconceptualisation before re-experiencing. Therefore, when teaching Managing Conflict, there are two mutually reinforcing reasons for requiring students to engage in self and peer assessment; they are effective learning techniques and they are important practitioners' skills. With this in mind, the assessment tasks for this subject required students to engage in self and peer assessment. However implementation proved difficult. Students felt that peer assessment and engaging in the process of self assessment were difficult. Drawing from the literature and feedback from students, these tasks were refined in 2006 to focus on peer feedback and self-reflection. This paper presents the rationale for the changes and explains the expected benefits. It then draws from student feedback to give a preliminary evaluation of the success of selfreflection and peer feedback and identifies opportunities for further improvement. This paper is a work in progress. Material in the paper cannot be used without permission of the author.


The present paper focuses on Cyber Security Awareness Campaigns, and aims to identify key factors regarding security which may lead them to failing to appropriately change people's behaviour. Past and current efforts to improve information-security practices and promote a sustainable society have not had the desired impact. It is important therefore to critically reflect on the challenges involved in improving information-security behaviours for citizens, consumers and employees. In particular, our work considers these challenges from a Psychology perspective, as we believe that understanding how people perceive risks is critical to creating effective awareness campaigns. Changing behaviour requires more than providing information about risks and reactive behaviours - firstly, people must be able to understand and apply the advice, and secondly, they must be motivated and willing to do so - and the latter requires changes to attitudes and intentions. These antecedents of behaviour change are identified in several psychological models of behaviour. We review the suitability of persuasion techniques, including the widely used 'fear appeals'. From this range of literature, we extract essential components for an awareness campaign as well as factors which can lead to a campaign's success or failure. Finally, we present examples of existing awareness campaigns in different cultures (the UK and Africa) and reflect on these.


The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is the first country in the world to appoint a State Minister for Artificial Intelligence (AI). The UAE is embracing AI in society at the governmental level, which is leading to a new generations of digital government (which we are labeling Gov. 3.0). This paper argues that the decision to embrace AI will lead to positive impacts on society, including businesses, organizations and individuals, as well as on the AI industry itself. This paper discusses the societal impacts of AI at a macro (country-wide) level.

This article is part of the special track on AI and Society.


The numerical solution of large-scale PDEs, such as those occurring in data-driven applications, unavoidably require powerful parallel computers and tailored parallel algorithms to make the best possible use of them. In fact, considerations about the parallelization and scalability of realistic problems are often critical enough to warrant acknowledgement in the modelling phase. The purpose of this paper is to spread awareness of the Probabilistic Domain Decomposition (PDD) method, a fresh approach to the parallelization of PDEs with excellent scalability properties. The idea exploits the stochastic representation of the PDE and its approximation via Monte Carlo in combination with deterministic high-performance PDE solvers. We describe the ingredients of PDD and its applicability in the scope of data science. In particular, we highlight recent advances in stochastic representations for non-linear PDEs using branching diffusions, which have significantly broadened the scope of PDD. We envision this work as a dictionary giving large-scale PDE practitioners references on the very latest algorithms and techniques of a non-standard, yet highly parallelizable, methodology at the interface of deterministic and probabilistic numerical methods. We close this work with an invitation to the fully non-linear case and open research questions.


Australian corporations operate in an increasingly international environment. It has intuitive appeal that Australian law should regulate the conduct of directors of Australian corporations even if it occurs outside Australia. This however can create tension with the competing rights of the foreign state in whose territory this conduct occurs to regulate such conduct. This thesis examines two questions. Firstly, does Australian law governing directors' duties in fact apply to activities of a director of an Australian corporation which occur or have effect outside Australia? Secondly, as a matter of policy, should Australian law apply to such activities, and if so when? The thesis concludes that the current Australian law on this issue needs to be developed further. In examining the first question, this thesis analyses Australian law on directors' duties in both its statutory and general form. The statutory analysis centres on the general extraterritoriality provision in subsection 5(4) of the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) ('CA') and particularly its application to part 2D.1 on directors' duties. Under this provision, each statutory director's duty applies, 'according to its tenor', extraterritorially. With regard to Australian general law, comprising common law and equity, it is Australian private international law that determines the choice between Australian law and foreign law. The choice of law rules require, in a first step, a categorisation of the duty allegedly breached by the director. Three categories need to be distinguished: contract, tort and equity. For each category, choice of law rules can lead to the application of Australian law if the relevant conduct occurs overseas. However, the circumstances in which Australian general directors' duties have extraterritorial application differs depending on whether the duty is of contractual, tortious or equitable origin. In considering the second question of whether and when Australian law should have extraterritorial application to directors' duties, both a policy and comparative analysis is undertaken. This thesis concludes that Australian law should have extraterritorial application to directors' duties providing there is a close connection with Australia in the particular circumstances. If there is no close connection with Australia but a closer connection with a foreign state that state's laws should apply. The thesis concludes that subsection 5(4) of the CA on extraterritoriality operates appropriately in relation to directors' duties in part 2D.1 CA. However, it is recommended that the provision be reworded to remove some ambiguity. In relation to the choice of law rules for general directors' duties, the thesis recommends that a mandatory choice of law rule be prescribed for equity based causes of action for breaches of directors' duties.


The purpose of the study is to explore the effect of how small firms draw on their limited networks to develop their markets and serve them well, a performance that will guarantee their survival and success. Drawing on a business relationship approach, two case studies have been used to highlight the extent to which exchange relationships have impacted on the performance of the small firms in this study. As an important finding, the study highlights the extent to which regular and intensive interactions between the case companies and the limited actors in their network have enabled each of the case companies to develop their respective niche markets and serve them well, something which also explains their survival and ability to win and retain loyal customers.


In order to research stability of four-wheel independent driving (4WID) electric vehicle, a torque allocation method based on the tire longitudinal forces optimization distribution is adopted. There are two layers in the controller, which includes the upper layer and the lower layer. In the upper layer, according to the demand of the longitudinal force, PID controller is set up to calculate the additional yaw moment created by yaw rate and side-slip angle. In the lower layer, the additional yaw moment is distributed properly to each wheel limited by several constraints. Carsim is used to build up the vehicle model and MATLAB/Simulink is used to build up the control model and both of them are used to simulate jointly. The result of simulation shows that a torque allocation method based on the tire longitudinal forces optimization distribution can ensure the stability of the vehicle.


Accessibility features prominently in the developing transport policies of both the United Kingdom Government and the devolved Scottish Executive which aim to promote social inclusion in particular and the integration of transport and land use planning more generally. It follows that a detailed understanding of the relationship between accessibility, personal mobility and travel behaviour is critical to the successful implementation of these policies. This paper presents the results of a disaggregate, multi-variate analysis of the Scottish Household Survey (SHS) dataset and attempts to unravel the complex relationship between socio-economical circumstance, geographical access to local services and public transport and revealed non-work travel choices. The socio-economical and geographical diversity of Scotland offers an excellent opportunity to undertake an analysis of this nature. The SHS is a continuous, cross-sectional survey funded by the Scottish Executive and undertaken by face-to-face interview based on a sample of the general population in private residences in Scotland. It seeks to provide information on the composition, characteristics and behaviour of Scottish households. The survey collects information in two parts - firstly the highest income householder provides household level data including household composition and income, key attributes of household members, transport resources available to the household including access to public transport; secondly a randomly selected adult from the household provides information on inter alia personal travel (including the completion of a one-day travel diary on the previous day) and personal views on transport, the neighbourhood and local services. The dataset analysed in this paper was collected between 1999 and 2003 and contains over 75,000 surveyed households and over 49,000 completed travel diaries. Two other variables were matched with the residential location of SHS respondents and added to the dataset; namely, an index representing proximity to local services at electoral ward level derived in the Scottish Indices of Deprivation 2003 study and a locational classification for each respondent which captures settlement size and wider regional accessibility. The primary focus of the analysis presented in this paper is an examination of the extent to which the quality of local access to services affects distance travelled for non-work purposes. Within this analysis individual and household socio-economical circumstance, available transport resources (both car ownership and local access to public transport) and the wider regional geographical context are also taken into account. It is hypothesised that good local access is negatively associated with distance travelled and that there also exists the possibility of significant interaction between local access and socio-economical circumstance and available transport resources. Regression models are developed for non-work travel which test the statistical significance of these explanatory variables. The results of the analysis reported here will add to the existing evidence base on the relationship between accessibility and travel choice. Its conclusions are expected to inform the development of strategies to enhance social inclusion and reduce overall travel which are tailored to socio-economical and geographical circumstance.


Reverse osmosis (RO) membrane treatment is well known for its ability to desalinate sea and brackish waters on a massive scale in large treatment plants. Conversely, RO membranes are also used to treat freshwater from questionable sources at the point of use. Both types of systems suffer from the negative effects of membrane fouling. There are four basic types of fouling: inorganic, colloidal, organic, and biofouling. Traditional methods for assessing fouling either cannot differentiate between the fouling types or destroy the membrane in the process. Currently, many new and innovative methods to non-destructively assess the degree and type of fouling inside a membrane unit are being researched. Most of these methods require the use of expensive electrodes and equipment which is not economical for point of use systems. This research was aimed at determining economical non-destructive methods to assess biofouling in point of use RO membrane treatment systems. Experimentation was performed on three parallel household RO membrane units operated under controlled feed water conditions to promote biofouling, inorganic fouling and a combination of both. Operational and biological parameters were monitored throughout the systems' lifespan. Membrane autopsies were also done to assess the degree and type of fouling. Statistical models were performed on the operational data to determine statistically relevant parameters between the fouling types that were subsequently validated by the membrane autopsies. Several non-destructive methods to assess the presence of biofouling were determined. Permeate flow rates decreased in a significantly different way when biofouling was present compared to when it was not. Large increases in permeate conductivity were also noted in membranes suffering from biofouling while they were not observed in membranes that had been inorganically fouled. The concentration of cell clumps in the retentate also increased in membranes experiencing biofouling while they did not increase in membranes that were inorganically fouled. These methods were found to not be sensitive enough to provide early warning for the presence of biofouling. However, these methods could be used to conveniently and economically assess the types of fouling problems being experienced household RO systems.


This paper investigates the effects of monetary policy over banks' loans growth and non-performing loans for the recent period in Brazil. We contribute to the literature on bank lending and risk taking channel by showing that during periods of loosening/tightening monetary policy, banks increase/decrease their loans. Moreover, our results illustrate that large, well-capitalized and liquid banks absorb better the effects of monetary policy shocks. We also find that low interest rates lead to an increase in credit risk exposure, supporting the existence of a risk-taking channel. Finally, we show that the impact of monetary policy differs across state-owned, foreign and private domestic banks. These results are important for developing and conducting monetary policy.


We prospectively evaluated 169 patients with a number of screening studies performed between 71 to 121 days after allogeneic marrow transplantation to detect the development of chronic graft-versus-host disease (GVHD). Group 1 patients (n = 78) were asymptomatic and had normal physical examinations at the time of screening and, with a minimum of 8 years follow-up, have not developed chronic GVHD. Group 2 patients (n = 38) had signs and symptoms of chronic GVHD at time of testing. Group 3 patients (n = 53) were similar to those in group 1 in having no clinically evident GVHD at the time of testing, but later developed clinical chronic GVHD. Using time to an event analysis, we compared patients in groups 1 and 3 to determine which of 17 clinical and laboratory factors evaluated at screening accurately predicted the development of subsequent chronic GVHD. Multivariate analyses showed several factors to have independent predictive value. In the first model, results of oral biopsies were excluded since these were done only in one half of the patients. Predictive factors in this analysis included: (1) histologic findings of GVHD on skin biopsy, relative risk 3.23 (95% confidence interval 1.75 to 5.94), P = .0002; and (2) history of grade II through IV acute GVHD, relative risk 3.12 (95% confidence interval 1.72 to 5.64), P = .0002. When oral biopsy results were included in the second model, independent risk factors included: (1) histologic findings of GVHD on skin biopsy, relative risk 5.96 (95% confidence interval 1.95 to 18.19), P = .0017; and (2) low numbers of immunoglobulin A (IgA)-bearing plasma cells detected by direct immunofluorescence in salivary gland areas on oral biopsy, relative risk 11.53 (95% confidence interval 2.51 to 52.03), P = .0017. Our study demonstrates the value of day 100 screening studies for predicting subsequent development of clinical chronic GVHD.


Human genetic resources are increasingly considered as ordinary commercial goods, but their value and utility go beyond the simple and immediate private profit. In contrast to other biological resources, commercial use does not focus upon the material itself but rather upon the genetic information it contains. Information goods are then usually subject to intellectual property rights, but in the biological and life science domains, property rights can have a negative influence upon the proper allocation of several goods, including genetic material or goods that are related to it. This scenario reflects the facts of recent litigations in the United States and Europe. In particular, these lawsuits have revived the debate over private ownership and control over genes.Within this context, the objective of the chapter is to discuss how to recast the traditional right to access to and use of biochemical and human genetic material currently considered as part of the market framework.


Abstract In this paper, I survey hindlimb and pelvic anatomy across non-avian dinosaurs and analyze these within a cladistic framework to quantify patterns of change within the locomotor apparatus. Specifically, I attempt to identify where homoplasy constitutes parallelism and may thereby be used to infer similar selective pressures on hindlimb function. Traditional methods of discrete character optimization are used along with two methods for evaluating changes in continuous characters in a phylogenetic context (squared-change parsimony and clade rank correlation). Resultant patterns are evaluated in light of the biomechanics of locomotion and the relationship between form and function in extant terrestrial vertebrates. Although non-avian dinosaurian locomotor morphology is strikingly uniform, these analyses reveal the repeated derivations of several morphological features that have potential relevance for hindlimb locomotor function. Anterior and posterior iliac expansion, a medially oriented femoral head, and an elevated femoral lesser trochanter each evolved independently multiple times within Dinosauria. These changes probably reflect enlargement of several hindlimb muscles as well as a general switch in their predominant function from abduction-adduction (characteristic of "sprawling" limb postures) to protraction-retraction (characteristic of parasagittal, or "erect," limb postures). Several "avian" characteristics are shared with more basal theropods, and many were acquired convergently in other dinosaurian lineages. The evolution of the avian hindlimb therefore represents a cumulative acquisition of characters, many of which were quite far removed in time and function from the origin of flight.


. The problem of parameter estimation and blind deconvolution of auto-regressive (AR) systems with independent nonstationary binary inputs is considered. The estimation procedure consists of applying a moving-average filter (equalizer) to the observed data and adjusting the parameters of the filter so as to minimize a criterion that measures the binariness of its output. The output sequence itself serves as an estimate of the unobservable binary input of the AR system. Without assuming stationarity of the inputs, it is shown that the proposed method produces a consistent estimator of the AR system not only in the sense of converging to the true parameter as the sample size increases, but also in the sense of attaining the true parameter of the AR system for a sufficiently large sample size. For noisy data, the estimation criterion is modified on the basis of an asymptotic analysis of the effect of the noise. It is shown that the modified criterion is also consistent (in the usual sense) and its variability depends upon the filtered noise. Some simulation results are presented to demonstrate the performance of the proposed method for parameter estimation as well as for blind deconvolution.


When designing a video affective content analysis algorithm, one of the most important steps is the selection of discriminative features for the effective representation of video segments. The majority of existing affective content analysis methods either use low-level audio-visual features or generate handcrafted higher level representations based on these low-level features. We propose in this work to use deep learning methods, in particular convolutional neural networks (CNNs), in order to automatically learn and extract mid-level representations from raw data. To this end, we exploit the audio and visual modality of videos by employing Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) and color values in the HSV color space. We also incorporate dense trajectory based motion features in order to further enhance the performance of the analysis. By means of multi-class support vector machines (SVMs) and fusion mechanisms, music video clips are classified into one of four affective categories representing the four quadrants of the Valence-Arousal (VA) space. Results obtained on a subset of the DEAP dataset show (1) that higher level representations perform better than low-level features, and (2) that incorporating motion information leads to a notable performance gain, independently from the chosen representation.


This Thesis has two themes: (1) political economy of international trade and factor mobility policy; (2) the robustness of strategic trade and industrial policy. Chapter 1 is a non-technical introduction of my research. In Chapter 2, Double-edged incentive competition for FDI, we study the impact of special interest lobbying on competition between two countries for a multinational in a common agency framework. \Ve address the following questions. On the positive side, is special interest lobbying a determinant of competition for FDI? If so, how does it work? How does it affect the equilibrium price for attracting FDI? On the normative side, what are the welfare effects of FDI competition when special interest lobbying is present? Is allocative efficiency always achieved? We argue that special interest lobbying provides an extra political incentive for a government to attract FDI. We show that compared to the benchmark case when governments maximize national welfare, now (1) an economically disadvantageous country has a chance to win the competition; (2) the equilibrium price for attracting FDI is higher than in the benchmark case; (3) allocative efficiency cannot be always achieved. In Chapter 3, Advertising in a differentiated duopoly and its policy implications for an open economy, we develop a model of advertising in a differentiated duopoly in which firms first decide how much to invest in cooperative or predatory advertising and then engage in product market competition (Cournot or Bertrand). We then use this model, with the type of advertising endogenously determined, to explore the policy implications in the context of a Brander-Spencer third-country model of strategic trade. Among results derived from this model, most interestingly we show that for a range of parameter values we get robust trade policy in which governments always use a trade subsidy irrespective of the type of advertising or form of market competition. In Chapter 4, Is export subsidy a robust trade policy recommendation towards a unionized duopoly, we argue that although previous researches imply that the robust trade policy recommendation towards a unionized duopoly is an export subsidy, we cannot get such a result even in the linear case if the opportunity cost of public funds is sufficiently high. However, if we consider the case where the domestic firm and the trade union lobby the government to set their favorable trade policies by giving the government political contributions (modeled in a common agency setting), then the result of robustness will be restored if the government cares about the political contributions sufficiently relative to national welfare. See Chapter 5 for some technical proofs.


Anions have often been considered to act essentially as electron donors or acceptors in molecular conductors. However there is now growing evidence that they play an essential role in directing the structural and hence electronic properties of many of these systems. After reviewing the basic interactions and different ground states occurring in molecular conductors we consider in detail how anions influence the structure of donor stacks and often guide them toward different types of transitions. Consideration of the Bechgaard and Fabre salts illustrates how anions play a crucial role in directing these salts through complex phase diagrams where different conducting and localized states are in competition. We also emphasize the important role of hydrogen bonding and conformational flexibility of donors related to BEDT-TTF and we discuss how anions have frequently a strong control of the electronic landscape of these materials. Charge ordering, metal to metal and metal to insulator transitions occurring in these salts are considered.


Recent years have seen a disturbing increase in legal proposals by the public and government officials to interfere with the governance, missions, strategies, and decision-making of foundations and other charities. Underlying much of these debates is the premise – stated or merely presumed – that foundation and charity assets are "public money" and that such entities therefore are subject to various public mandates or standards about their structure, operations, and policies. The authors' experiences and research reveal three "myths" that, singly or collectively, underlie claims that charitable assets are public money. The first myth conceives of charities as shadow governments due to the requirement that they have public purposes and are subject to attorney general parens patriae oversight. The second myth asserts that, because philanthropies exist under state charters, they are government agencies, "state actors," or quasi-public bodies subject to constitutional constraints or accountable to the public in the same way as is government. The third myth asserts that revenue forgone on deductible charitable contributions and the tax exemption are a contribution from the state that entitles the state to a say in nonprofit governance structure, operations, and decision-making. In debunking these myths, this paper demonstrates the lack of legal support for the "public money" view of charitable assets.


There is a general knowledge about the United States governments' deliberate attempts to destroy American Indian cultures. Our history books tell of American Indian students being locked in week long routines to keep them out of mischief, underfed to break down resistance and being given deadening rounds of simple, repetitious chores bereft of challenges to numb their intelligence, and taught dominant western values and language (Brave Heart & De Bruyn (1998). Possibly, too few people are aware that assimilation of American Indians continues in our country today in multitudinous forms, including Indian boarding school residential environments. The assimilation of American Indians entails the replacement of tribal sets of beliefs and actions directly linked to the beliefs of distinct tribal groups with Western sets of beliefs and actions (Brayboy, 2005). Currently there are 72 Indian boarding schools funded by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, serving over 10,000 students in the United States (Bureau of Indian Affairs, 2003). The few educational and psychological articles suggest that many Indian boarding schools have and do engage in assimilating students into mainstream culture at the expense of tribal values. In a national survey by Robinson-Zanatir and Majel-Dixon (1996), 234 American Indian parents representing fifty-five tribes reported that they felt that tribal schools valued Indian children more than Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) boarding schools and public schools in the areas of: respect, expectations of achievement, and degree to which Indian culture is valued. In narrative comments, participants stressed that boarding schools have not tried to understand Indian communities, culture or learning styles. Lacroix (1994) reported that American Indian girls attending Indian boarding schools related that they suffer from loss of cultural identity and experience their schools as "imposed" systems. Noted historian Joel Spring (2001) decries Anglo-American racism in Indian boarding schools which insidiously replaces tribal cultures with dominant culture. He sites religious intolerance as being particularly prevalent in Indian boarding schools. There is anecdotal support suggesting that American Indian boarding school attendance may be associated with psychological dysfunction among some students. Counseling American Indian clients in British Colombia, Charles Brasfield (2001) identified a common symptomology among survivors of Indian residential schools, which he calls "residential school syndrome." The effects include: distressing recollections, recurrent distressing dreams of residential school, a sense of reliving the residential experiences, distress at exposure to cues that resemble residential experiences, avoidance of stimuli associated with residential experience, inability to recall important aspects of residential experience, diminished interest in participating in tribal activities, restrictive range of affect, feelings of detachment, increased arousal particularly when intoxicated, sleep problems, difficulty concentrating, and exaggerated startle response. Symptoms may include deficient knowledge of tribal culture, deficient parenting skills and a tendency to abuse alcohol and drugs. This study attempts to take into account the interplay of inner psychic conflicts of American Indian boarding school students in Indian boarding school environments; interactions between aspects of the school environment; the broader environment, such as the government and /or the media; and cultural and political beliefs complex process of assimilation that occurs in Indian boarding school residential settings (Bronfenbrenner's ecological model, 1979). There are several elements in this study that mark it as unique. (1) It focuses on boarding school residential practices rather than academic educational practices. (2) It also accepts the risk of attempting to analyze inter-psychic conflicts in the context of cultural, political and social contexts. …


The potential of using information technology for socio-economic development of the country and the life quality of every citizen is quite significant now in Ukraine. The aim of the article is to study the modern possibilities of using information technologies, namely, adaptations of accounting and analytical support in the conditions of diffusion of socio-economic values to increase the welfare of the population. The methods of divergence and convergence, rationality and irrationality were used in the work - to search for effective tools for regulating national and international financial relations in Ukraine in the context of the challenges of globalization; methods of analysis of cognitive data – to determine the forms and directions of digital hygiene in Ukrainian society; conceptualization of consequences and the duality of assessing results - to illustrate the reflection of the current state of development of the analytical basis and levelling Ukraine's dependence on financial hedonism, which currently prevails in the world. Specific areas of application of innovative technologies are proposed, such as tourism services and hotel and restaurant business. Ensuring the competitiveness of national industries as a result of their use of innovative behaviour and the development of new technologies and the accumulation by economically active subjects of innovative knowledge and empirical skills ensures the introduction of new information technologies in various spheres of human life, with no exception of tourism and restaurant industry. The modern industry of restaurant and tourism business has been actively using specialized software and global computer networks in recent years to increase the efficiency of the placement and search of information, the activation of promotion and services marketing, and the improvement of the quality of customer service, as this is an important condition for the quality of such services. Thus, integration aspirations in the global socio-economic system should be supplemented by facilitating access to advanced information technologies within the country itself. This is a necessary condition for the process of diffusion of socio-economic development and innovative knowledge that should be accumulated in the country.
Keywords: innovation, technology transfer, welfare, socio-economic development, accounting and analytical support


Citizens are increasingly becoming involved in data collection, whether for scientific purposes, to carry out micro-tasks, or as part of a gamified, competitive application. In some cases, volunteered data collection overlaps with that of mapping agencies, e.g., the citizen-based mapping of features in OpenStreetMap. LUCAS (Land Use Cover Area frame Sample) is one source of authoritative in-situ data that are collected every three years across EU member countries by trained personnel at a considerable cost to taxpayers. This paper presents a mobile application called FotoQuest Austria, which involves citizens in the crowdsourcing of in-situ land cover and land use data, including at locations of LUCAS sample points in Austria. The results from a campaign run during the summer of 2015 suggest that land cover and land use can be crowdsourced using a simple protocol based on LUCAS. This has implications for remote sensing as this data stream represents a new source of potentially valuable information for the training and validation of land cover maps as well as for area estimation purposes. Although the most detailed and challenging classes were more difficult for untrained citizens to recognize, the agreement between the crowdsourced data and the LUCAS data for basic high level land cover and land use classes in homogeneous areas (ca. 80%) shows clear potential. Recommendations for how to further improve the quality of the crowdsourced data in the context of LUCAS are provided so that this source of data might one day be accurate enough for land cover mapping purposes.