The United States, the United Nations, the European Union, and France are at a critical point in our shared history. The European Union, since the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, has made steady progress toward real relevance in the areas of politics, economics, and security. Functioning like a quasi-nation state, it ranks among the world's most powerful political entities. Yet its lack of representation in the United Nations decreases the efficiency of both organizations. A single substitution within the Security Council can correct this issue without opening up the Security Council to radical structural changes: the French seat on the Security Council should become the EU seat. There are currently numerous ongoing debates on revising the makeup of the Security Council. Emerging world powers, including India and Brazil, primarily drive these discussions, arguing that the Council fails to adequately reflect the dynamics of today's world. Indeed, there are precedents for such a change: China replaced Taiwan in 1971, and Russia replaced the defunct Soviet Union in 1991. Now is the time to place the European Union on the Security Council, as its constitutional powers have been strengthened with the implementation of the 2008 Lisbon Treaty. With over 500 million citizens, the European Union exercises significant authority to ratify treaties for its regional members, develops a common European defense policy, and produces almost 30 percent of the world's economic output. Under the EU Treaty, member nations on the Security Council--the United Kingdom and France, along with any member serving a two-year tour on the council--keep other EU members informed of Security Council actions and ensure EU positions are upheld, as long as they don't conflict with that nation's positions. Although EU representatives play a significant role in brokering international agreements, coordination with the United Nations is unofficial, and both EU and UN efforts become unnecessarily complicated. In contrast to the European Union, France currently exercises a level of influence through its seat on the Security Council beyond that justified by its military, political, or economic ranking in the world. France provides only 18 percent of the European Union's GDP (US$2.097 trillion), ranking behind Germany (US$2.81 trillion) and the United Kingdom (US$2.128 trillion). Militarily, while France supports NATO, a standing EU military, and other multinational forces, direct French military influence is limited primarily to the Francophone regions of Africa. …


Yellow bristle grass (Setaria pumila), an invasive annual grass weed in North America, Africa, Australia and New Zealand, has become a problem on dairy farms in the upper North Island. To define its potential distribution in New Zealand, an eco-climatic model was constructed using CLIMEX. The model was parameterised using the known distribution of the species in its native range in Eurasia and validated against its invaded range in North America. The model predicted all known occurrences in New Zealand and revealed extensive tracts of land in both the North and South Islands that are currently climatically suitable yet, according to current records, unoccupied by the weed. Under climate change, this potential distribution increases substantially. These results imply that yellow bristle grass could become a much wider problem on dairy farms throughout New Zealand and that management to limit its spread is justified.


Genetic case-control association studies often include data on clinical covariates, such as body mass index (BMI), smoking status, or age, that may modify the underlying genetic risk of case or control samples. For example, in type 2 diabetes, odds ratios for established variants estimated from low–BMI cases are larger than those estimated from high–BMI cases. An unanswered question is how to use this information to maximize statistical power in case-control studies that ascertain individuals on the basis of phenotype (case-control ascertainment) or phenotype and clinical covariates (case-control-covariate ascertainment). While current approaches improve power in studies with random ascertainment, they often lose power under case-control ascertainment and fail to capture available power increases under case-control-covariate ascertainment. We show that an informed conditioning approach, based on the liability threshold model with parameters informed by external epidemiological information, fully accounts for disease prevalence and non-random ascertainment of phenotype as well as covariates and provides a substantial increase in power while maintaining a properly controlled false-positive rate. Our method outperforms standard case-control association tests with or without covariates, tests of gene x covariate interaction, and previously proposed tests for dealing with covariates in ascertained data, with especially large improvements in the case of case-control-covariate ascertainment. We investigate empirical case-control studies of type 2 diabetes, prostate cancer, lung cancer, breast cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, age-related macular degeneration, and end-stage kidney disease over a total of 89,726 samples. In these datasets, informed conditioning outperforms logistic regression for 115 of the 157 known associated variants investigated (P-value = 1×10−9). The improvement varied across diseases with a 16% median increase in χ2 test statistics and a commensurate increase in power. This suggests that applying our method to existing and future association studies of these diseases may identify novel disease loci.


Pervious pavements are sustainable urban drainage systems already known as rainwater infiltration techniques which reduce runoff formation and diffuse pollution in cities. The present research is focused on the design and construction of an experimental parking area, composed of 45 pervious pavement parking bays. Every pervious pavement was experimentally designed to store rainwater and measure the levels of the stored water and its quality over time. Six different pervious surfaces are combined with four different geotextiles in order to test which materials respond better to the good quality of rainwater storage over time and under the specific weather conditions of the north of Spain. The aim of this research was to obtain a good performance of pervious pavements that offered simultaneously a positive urban service and helped to harvest rainwater with a good quality to be used for non potable demands.


Leverage the power of Unity 5 to create fun and unbelievable AI entities in your games! About This Book * Compose richer games by learning the essential concepts in artificial intelligence with exciting examples * Explore the brand new Unity 5 features that make implementing artificial intelligence in your game easier than ever * Using this practical guide become a competent Unity 3D developer by learning AI techniques, methods and the applicability of AI Who This Book Is For This book is intended for Unity developers with a basic understanding of C# and the Unity editor. Whether you're looking to build your first game or are looking to expand your knowledge as a game programmer, you will find plenty of exciting information and examples of game AI in terms of concepts and implementation. It does not require any prior technical knowledge of how game AI works. What You Will Learn * Understand the basic terminology and concepts in game AI * Implement a basic finite state machine using state machine behaviors in Unity 5 * Create sensory systems for your AI with the most commonly used techniques * Implement an industry-standard path-finding system and a navigation mesh with the Unity 5 NavMesh feature * Build believable and highly-efficient artificial flocks and crowds * Create a basic behavior tree to drive a character's actions * Make your characters more engaging by implementing fuzzy logic concepts in your AI's decision-making * Tie all the concepts together with examples and guides In Detail Unity 5 provides game and app developers with a variety of tools to implement artificial intelligence. Leveraging these tools via Unity's API or built-in features allows limitless possibilities when it comes to creating your games worlds and characters. Whether you are developing traditional, serious, educational, or any other kind of game, understanding how to apply artificial intelligence can take the fun-factor to the next level! This book helps you break down artificial intelligence into simple concepts to give the reader a fundamental understanding of the topic to build upon. Using a variety of examples, the book then takes those concepts and walks you through actual implementations designed to highlight key concepts, and features related to game AI in Unity 5. Along the way, several tips and tricks are included to make the development of your own AI easier and more efficient. Starting from covering the basic essential concepts to form a base for the later chapters in the book, you will learn to distinguish the state machine pattern along with implementing your own. This will be followed by learning how to implement a basic sensory system for your AI agent and coupling it with a finite state machine (FSM). Next you will be taught how to use Unity's built-in NavMesh feature and implement your own A* pathfinding system. Then you will learn how to implement simple flocks and crowd's dynamics, the key AI concepts. Then moving on you will learn how a behavior tree works and its implementation. Next you will learn adding layer of realism by combining fuzzy logic concepts with state machines. Lastly, you learn applying all the concepts in the book by combining them in a simple tank game. Style and approach An easy-to-follow guide that is full of example implementations of the concepts and is accompanied by easy-to-understand demonstrations and explanations of the code and concepts.


This paper presents price and income elasticities of food demand for Germany. Using disaggregated household scanner data and the Quadratic Almost Ideal Demand System (QUAIDS). The QUAIDS is modified to account for censoring and include household demographics. Furthermore, a two-stage budgeting approach is used to more accurately reflect households' purchasing behaviour. Having disaggregated data also allowed to include convenience aspects into the demand system. High expenditure elasticities are found for fruits and nuts and meat, fish and eggs. The highest own-price elasticity is found for beverages. At the second stage, the bread toppings group reveals new insights into demand relations between cold cuts, cheese and other spreads. Cold cuts have both the highest expenditure and own-price elasticity. Cross-price elasticities indicate mostly complementary relations between cold cuts and other bread toppings. Comparing different income groups shows that expenditure elasticities of raw foods or basic ingredient foods tend to decrease as income increases, whereas expenditure elasticities of foods that require minimal or no preparation tend to increase with income. In conclusion, this study stresses the need for regularly updated elasticities of food demand that reflect up-to-date consumption behavior.


This research describes the steps towards the development of a low-cost wheelchair-mounted manipulator for use by the physically disabled and elderly. A detailed review of world rehabilitation robotics research has been conducted, covering fifty-six projects. This identified the main areas of research, their scope and results. From this review, a critical investigation of past and present wheelchair-mounted robotic arm projects was undertaken. This led to the formulation of the key design parameters in a final design specification. The results of a questionnaire survey of fifty electric wheelchair users is presented, which has for the first time established the needs and abilities of this disability group. An analysis of muscle type actuators, which mimic human muscle, is presented and their application to robotics, orthotics and prosthetics is given. A new type of rotary pneumatic muscle actuator, the flexator, is introduced and through extensive testing its performance characteristics elucidated. A review of direct-drive rotary pneumatic, hydraulic and electrical actuators has highlighted their relative performance characteristics and has rated their efficiency in terms of their peak torque to motor mass ratio, Tp/MM. From this, the flexator actuator has been shown to have a higher Tp/MM ratio than most conventional actuators. A novel kinematic arrangement is presented which combines the best features of the SCARA and vertically articulated industrial robot geometries, to form the 'Scariculated' arm design. The most appropriate actuator for each joint of this hybrid manipulator was selected, based on the criteria of high Tp/MM ratio, low cost, safety and compatibility. The final design incorporates conventional pneumatic linear double-acting cylinders, a vane type rotary actuator, two dual flexator actuators, and stepping motors for the fme control of the wrist/end effector. An ACSL simulation program has been developed which uses mass flow rate equations, based on one-dimensional compressible flow theory and suppressed critical pressure ratios, to simulate the dual flexator actuator. Theoretical and empirical data is compared and shows a high degree of correlation between results. Finally, the design and development work on two prototypes is discussed. The latest prototype consists of a five-axis manipulator whose pneumatic joints are driven by pulse width modulated solenoid valves. An 8051 microprocessor with proportional error feedback modilles the mark to space ratio of the PWM signal in proportion to the angular error of the joints. This enables control over individual joint speeds, reprogrammable memory locations and position monitoring of each joint. The integration of rehabilitation robotic manipulators into the daily lives of the physically disabled and elderly will significantly influence the role of personal rehabilitation in the next century.


Similar to traditional evidence, courts of law do not assume that digital evidence is reliable if there is no evidence of some empirical testing regarding the theories and techniques pertaining to its production. Courts take a careful notice of the way in which digital evidence has been acquired and stored. In contrast with traditional crimes for which there are well-established standards and procedures upon which courts can rely, there are no formal procedures or models for digital data acquisition to which courts of law can refer. A standardised data acquisition process model is needed to enable digital forensic investigators to follow a uniform approach, and to assist courts of law in determining the reliability of digital evidence presented to them. This paper proposes a model that is standardised in that it can enable digital forensic investigators in following a uniform approach, and that is generic in that it can be applied in both law enforcement and corporate investigations. To carry out the research presented in the paper, the design science research process (DSRP) methodology proposed by Peffers et al. (2006) has been followed.


INTRODUCTION The concepts of Supply Chain Management have been around for quite a while and have already shown their possible positive impact on the performance of a company. In recent years the stakes of this game have changed. It is no longer considered being a field of innovative competitive advantage over the competition, but a necessity to stay profitable and competitive. Most companies have realized that only close collaboration with all involved partners can produce the kind of speed and reaction time to customer demands that are needed in today's business world. Another shift in the focus took place in the past; the first steps in Supply Chain Management were mainly concerned about the integration of suppliers to ease the operations for their own company. Some companies even only focused on new strategies for procurement to squeeze the profits from their suppliers. But the slow move to put the customer in the center of all operations brought many firms to the point where they realized that only cooperation could deliver the desired results. Supply Chain Management changed to Demand Chain Management by examining the downstream components of the whole chain; the part directed towards the customer, but this focus is too narrow, so the Value Chain Management finally evolved. Value Chains are concerned about the whole chain, from the raw material supplier to the end customer, and set the value or the satisfaction perceived by the end customer in the center of attention. The relationship with e-business can be a very close one; both concepts can greatly gain from the application of the other concept. Only a working value chain management can offer a company the benefits from e-business, especially in e-commerce, to their fullest extend and e-business can boost the cooperation in the value chain to improve the performance of the whole chain. SUPPLY AND VALUE CHAIN MANAGEMENT The modification of the supply chain management concept is to expand the focus and include more partners, especially in downstream direction that further increased the benefits and importance of supply chain management. This was another step towards managing the whole chain from the raw material produced by the supplier to the end customer and building a network or chain of partners working jointly together to achieve better customer satisfaction. Demand chain management brought some new concepts and ideas into consideration that partly replaced the concepts of supply chain management in a narrow sense. If one takes this narrow definition of the supply chain that is concerned about the smooth operations with partners mainly upstream in the chain, the system can be defined as a push-system while demand chain management is a pull-system. (Vakharia, 2002) This paper will not distinguish between demand and supply chain management and see them as different forms of the same idea. Every company should always consider the whole value chain from the beginning to the end and the demand chain for one company is the supply chain for a company's further downstream. Therefore the whole chain has to decide whether to use a 'push-systems', based on demand forecast and assumed consumption, or a 'pull-systems', based on the real consumption and demand of the end customer instead of forecast. The value chain also pushes the scope further by not only focusing on the smooth flow of goods and information and the small cooperation with the direct neighbors in the chain. It should also look at the operation of the whole chain and assessing the performance based on the ultimate measurement, customer satisfaction, and changing and improving the overall way of performing the related tasks. The, probably, easiest distinction between a supply chain and a value chain is the focus. Rash (2001) stated that supply chain management is mainly concerned about the manufacturing part of operations and thereby the flow of goods and information needed to process the goods, while value chain management also includes the general flow of information. …


People who believe that their society has few impediments to upward mobility tend to oppose governmental redistribution. This is true even among the poor. Is this because people with this belief expect to be well off in the future, and hence oppose redistribution on self-interested gounds? Or is it because they believe that the less well off have not made the effort to move up, and therefore are morally undeserving of support? This paper uses quantitative sensitivity analysis to examine the robustness of the evidence for each of these views. It finds that the effect of prospective mobility is sensitive to measurement error in current income. In contrast, there is robust support for the view that beliefs about moral worthiness matter.


Widely accepted as the "father" of Op-art, Victor Vasarely worked his whole life to create mesmerising works that were visually both complex and accessible. Now paper artist Philippe UG has transformed seven of Vasarely's most beautiful works into paper sculptures in his newest pop-up book. As readers turn the pages, Vasarely's creations spring to life in delicate and vibrant three-dimensional structures that trick the eye and excite the imagination. Whether you're a long-time fan of Vasarely or pop-up books in general, this unique book offers a visual experience that readers will turn to again and again.


Background While hypertension is negatively associated with coronary artery spasm (CAS), scarce data are available on diabetes mellitus in relation to CAS. In addition, outcome prediction in patients with CAS is challenging due to the lack of appropriate biomarkers. Therefore, we sought to identify the roles that gender, high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP), diabetes mellitus and hypertension play in CAS development and prognosis. Methodology/Prinicpal Findings Patients (350 women and 547 men) undergoing diagnostic coronary angiography with or without proven CAS but without obstructive stenosis were evaluated at long-term follow-up (median 102 months). Diabetic women and diabetic men with low hs-CRP levels had a low and high risk of CAS (odds ratio [OR]: 0.16, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.01–1.88 and OR: 5.02, 95% CI: 1.03–24.54, respectively). The ORs of CAS in both women and men with the highest hs-CRP tertile (>3 mg/L) reduced from 4.41 to 1.45 and 2.98 to 1.52, respectively, if they had diabetes mellitus, and from 9.68 to 2.43 and 2.60 to 1.75, respectively, if they had hypertension. Hypertension had a more negative effect on CAS development in diabetic than non-diabetic women, which was not observed in men. The highest hs-CRP tertile was an independent predictor of adverse outcomes. Patients with the highest hs-CRP tertile had more coronary events than patients with the lowest hs-CRP tertitle (p = 0.021, log-rank test). Conclusions Diabetes mellitus contributes to CAS development in men with low hs-CRP levels, but not in women. There are negative effects of diabetes mellitus and hypertension on CAS development in patients with high hs-CRP levels and especially in women. Elevated hs-CRP level independently predicts adverse outcomes.


Abstract. The historic Limb Infrared Monitor of the Stratosphere (LIMS) measurements of 1978–1979 from the Nimbus 7 satellite were re-processed with Version 6 (V6) algorithms and archived in 2002. The V6 data set employs updated radiance registration methods, improved spectroscopic line parameters, and a common vertical resolution for all retrieved parameters. Retrieved profiles are spaced about every 1.6° of latitude along orbits and include the additional parameter of geopotential height. Profiles of O3 are sensitive to perturbations from emissions of polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs). This work presents results of implementing a first-order screening for effects of PSCs using simple algorithms based on vertical gradients of the O3 mixing ratio. Their occurrences are compared with the co-located, retrieved temperatures and related to the temperature thresholds needed for saturation of H2O and/or HNO3 vapor onto PSC particles. Observed daily locations where the major PSC screening criteria are satisfied are validated against PSCs observed with the Stratospheric Aerosol Monitor (SAM) II experiment also on Nimbus 7. Remnants of emissions from PSCs are characterized for O3 and HNO3 following the screening. PSCs may also impart a warm bias in the co-located LIMS temperatures, but by no more than 1–2 K at the altitudes of where effects of PSCs are a maximum in the ozone; thus, no PSC screening was applied to the V6 temperatures. Minimum temperatures vary between 187 and 194 K and often occur 1 to 2 km above where PSC effects are first identified in the ozone (most often between about 21 and 28 hPa). Those temperature–pressure values are consistent with conditions for the existence of nitric acid trihydrate (NAT) mixtures and to a lesser extent of super-cooled ternary solution (STS) droplets. A local, temporary uptake of HNO3 vapor of order 1–3 ppbv is indicated during mid-January for the 550 K surface. Seven-month time series of the distributions of LIMS O3 and HNO3 are shown based on their gridded Level 3 data following the PSC screening. Zonal coefficients of both species are essentially free of effects from PSCs on the 550 K surface, based on their average values along PV contours and in terms of equivalent latitude. Remnants of PSCs are still present in O3 on the 450 K surface during mid-January. It is judged that the LIMS Level 3 data are of good quality for analyzing the larger-scale, stratospheric chemistry and transport processes during the Arctic winter of 1978–1979.


Drugs control or cure a disease and provide relief in symptoms, but, vaccines prevent occurrence of the specific diseases, thus, development of vaccine was a landmark discovery. With advent of advanced technologies improved versions of some old vaccines and many new vaccines are available, but, these are very expensive vaccines. Development of new vaccines is not only a time consuming exercise, but an expensive venture also because studies regarding efficacy and safely are mandatory before a license to market the vaccine is issued. Overhead expenditures are incurred on transportation, storage and sale of the product. The governments also impose different taxes on the vaccines. All these expenses raise further the cost of vaccines. The great irony is that people belonging to low socio-economic strata are most vulnerable to contact infectious diseases, thus need vaccines most, but may not be in a position to afford these. The drug industry, the governments and medical professionals should device strategies to bring down the prices of the vaccines. Edward Jenner and Louis Pasteur developed Smallpox and Rabies vaccines respectively to provide benefit to the mankind, same principle or motive needs to be carried forward.


Despite the catastrophic phase between 2008 and the end of 2014, much of a previously unsustainable development has been corrected in Greece and there are clear signs that the deterioration came to a halt in 2014. But what is publicly known about the priorities of the newly elected Syriza government suggests that they may be going largely into the wrong direction.


Taschen's "Decorative Arts" series, whose six installments span the 20th century up through the 1970s, carefully reproduces the best of "Decorative Art, The Studio Yearbook". Published annually from 1906 until 1980, the yearbook was dedicated to the latest currents in architecture, interiors, furniture, lighting, glassware, textiles, metalware, and ceramics. Since the publications went out of print, the now hard-to-find yearbooks have become highly prized by collectors and dealers. Preserving the yearbooks' original page layouts, Taschen's "Decorative Arts" books bring you the authentic experience of each decade's design trends and styles. This volume spotlights the futuristic, experimental aesthetic of the 1970s. After the revolutions of the '60s, the world of design and architecture became an increasingly exciting and fast-moving hotbed of ideas, rife with vehemently opposing schools and movements. In many ways it was a more extreme era for design than the previous decade. Experimentalism was everywhere, and many projects, thought not practical, were forward-thinking visions of a new kind of decorative art and design. Various groups advocated returning to natural methods, rejecting style in favor of craft or pushing the logic of industrial living to its concrete, high-rise extreme. "Decorative Arts 1970s" includes the work of the decade's brightest stars, such as Afra and Tobia Scarpa, Luigi Coltani, Ettore Sottsass, Achille Castiglioni, Kisho Kurokawa, Norman Foster, Richard Meier, and Theo Crosby.


This thesis explores the notion of 'experimental voice' in avant-garde performance, in the way it transgresses conventional forms of vocal expression as a means of both extending and enhancing the expressive capabilities of the voice, and reframing the social and political contexts in which these voices are heard. I examine these avant-garde voices in relation to three different liminal contexts in which the voice plays a central role: in ritual vocal expressions, such as Greek lament and Māori karanga, where the voice forms a bridge between the living and the dead; in electroacoustic music and film, where the voice is dissociated from its source body and can be heard to resound somewhere between human and machine; and from a psychoanalytic perspective, where the voice may bring to consciousness the repressed fears and desires of the unconscious. The liminal phase of ritual performance is a time of inherent possibility, where the usual social structures are inverted or subverted, but the liminal is ultimately temporary and conservative. Victor Turner suggests the concept of the 'liminoid' as a more transgressive alternative to the liminal, allowing for permanent and lasting social change. It may be in the liminoid realm of avant-garde performance that voices can be reimagined inside the frame of performance, as a means of exploring new forms of expression in life. This thesis comes out of my own experience as a performer and is informed both by theoretical discourse and practical experimentation in the theatre. Exploring the voice as a liminal, transgressive force requires analysis from an experiential perspective.


Marshall Sahlins (1996) argues that anthropology has been the bearer of a "bourgeoisified" Judeo-Christian cosmology according to which an original state of chaos, akin to the Hobbesian state of nature, gives way to the order of society or the state. The central conundrum that this anthropology has sought to explain is how fallen and needy individuals come together in cooperative organization. Sahlins furthermore contends that, by universalizing this problematic as the key to interpreting human societies and social action, anthropology has subverted its attempts at cross-cultural understanding. My aim in this paper is to draw attention to a growing commitment within anthropology to a different cosmological paradigm with an inverse structure. Today, the elevation of ethnic and cultural hybridity as both an approximate return to primordial human unity and an emancipatory moral high ground renders socio-cultural difference at once the presumed telos of many social practices and a scandal to be overcome. Whereas the older anthropological cosmology uncovered by Sahlins posited progress from atomistic privation to social solidarity, this new cosmology posits the politically motivated splintering of essential human unity by the construction of ethnicity and culture. Although I iterate the caution that this emergent paradigm too has the potential to reproduce itself as ethnography, I emphasize as more important its promising and troubling potential to revalorize anthropological thinking on cosmology. Specifically, ownership of the meta-cosmology encoded in hybridity theory ought to prompt anthropologists to question our recently acquired aversion to the idea that cosmologies inform human action. At the same time, however, we need to scrutinize our fascination with hybridity for signs of an unintentionally Nietzschean glorification of dissolution or aestheticization of periodic destruction as the necessary foundation for political and moral renovation.


The temperature sensitivity of litter decomposition will influence the rates of ecosystem carbon sequestration in a warmer world. A number of studies have shown that the temperature sensitivity of litter decomposition can vary depending on litter type and extent of decomposition. However, the underlying causes of this variation are not well understood. According to fundamental principles of enzyme kinetics, the temperature sen- sitivity of microbial decomposition should be inversely related to litter carbon quality. We tested the accuracy of this hypothesis by adding ground plant shoot and root material to soils incubated under controlled conditions and measuring the temperature sensitivities of decomposition at three time points throughout a 53-d incubation. As the overall quality of the litter organic C declined, litter decomposition became more sensitive to temperature. This was true regardless of whether differences in C quality were due to inherent differences in litter chemistry or due to differences in the extent of decomposition. The same pattern was observed when specific C compounds of varying quality were added to soil, suggesting that substrate C quality has a significant and predictable influence on the temperature sensitivity of microbial decomposition.


We analyze flow in heterogeneous media composed of multiple materials whose hydraulic properties and geometries are uncertain. Our analysis relies on the composite media theory of Winter and Tartakovsky [2000 , 2002 ], which allows one to derive and solve moment equations even when the medium is highly heterogeneous. We use numerical solutions of Darcy flows through a representative composite medium to investigate the robustness of perturbation approximations in porous medium with total log conductivity variances as high as 20. We also investigate the relative importance of the two sources of uncertainty in composite media, material properties, and geometry. In our examples the uncertain geometry by itself captures the main features of the mean head estimated by the full composite model even when the within‐material conductivities are deterministic. However, neglecting randomness within materials leads to head variance estimates that are qualitatively and quantitatively wrong. We compare the composite media approach to approximations that replace statistically inhomogeneous conductivity fields with pseudohomogeneous random fields with deterministic trends. We demonstrate that models with a deterministic trend can be expected to give a poor estimate of the statistics of head.


The question whether the phosphate participates actively in the calculogenesis or whether it is only an accidental enclosure in the stone material can, in our opinion, only be answered by the quantitative determination of phosphorus in the stone material resp. in the organic stone matrix. The high enrichment of phosphorus in the stone material, in comparison with the urine, as well as its additional significant enrichment in the stone matrix, compared with the (crystalline) stone material, both deduced from our analytical data, nearly exclude a passive role of the phosphate in the calculogenesis. On the basis of our investigation we suppose that the phosphate crystalluriae, occurring spontaneously or induced, at moderate pH-values of urine, especially by Ca-oxalate, sometimes by urate crystalluriae, contribute to the crystal "density" in the urine, the sufficient crystal "density" being one of the preconditions for the formation of compact crystal aggregates; the other precondition is the presence of the reactive organic cement substance in a sufficient concentration. This active crystal agglomerating component is represented, in our conception, by partially hemolysed blood cells resp. by the cholesterol of their damaged membranes.


This paper develops three simple ideas about force development during sustained locomotion which provide some insights into the mechanisms that determine why animals change gait, how fast they can run, and how much metabolic energy they consume. The first idea is that the alternate stretch-shorten pattern of activity of the muscles involved in locomotion allows muscle-tendon units to function as springs, affecting the amount of force a given cross-sectional area of muscle develops, and the metabolic requirements of the muscles for force development. Animals select speeds and stride frequencies which optimize the performance of these springs. The second idea is that muscle stress (force/cross-sectional area) determines when animals change gait, how fast they run and their peak accelerations and decelerations. It is proposed that terrestrial birds and mammals develop similar muscle stresses under equivalent conditions (i.e. preferred speed within a gait) and that animals change gaits in order to reduce peak stresses as they increase speed. Finally, evidence is presented to support the idea that it is the time course of force development during locomotion, rather than the mechanical work that the muscles perform, that determines the metabolic cost of locomotion.


In terms of climate hazards, Trinidad and Tobago will, presumably, undergo higher tropical storm (TS) frequency and the effects derived from them: coastal flooding, wind and rainfall. Additionally the island will likely experience sea level rise and more frequent and intense droughts.

In this report, the potential hazards due to climate change are presented, the economic effects of climate change in Trinidad and Tobago are calculated, the actions to mitigate the losses caused by climate change are proposed, and their economic costs and benefits are analyzed.


Abstract. Transport of reactive air masses into humid and wet areas is highly frequent in the atmosphere, making the study of aqueous phase processing of secondary organic aerosol (SOA) very relevant. We have investigated the aqueous phase processing of SOA generated from gas-phase photooxidation of isoprene using a smog chamber. The SOA collected on filters was extracted by water and subsequently oxidized in the aqueous phase either by H2O2 under dark conditions or by OH radicals in the presence of light, using a photochemical reactor. Online and offline analytical techniques including SMPS, HR-AMS, H-TDMA, TD-API-AMS, were employed for physical and chemical characterization of the chamber SOA and nebulized filter extracts. After aqueous phase processing, the particles were significantly more hygroscopic, and HR-AMS data showed higher signal intensity at m/z 44 and a lower signal intensity at m/z 43, thus showing the impact of aqueous phase processing on SOA aging, in good agreement with a few previous studies. Additional offline measurement techniques (IC-MS, APCI-MS2 and HPLC-APCI-MS) permitted the identification and quantification of sixteen individual chemical compounds before and after aqueous phase processing. Among these compounds, small organic acids (including formic, glyoxylic, glycolic, butyric, oxalic and 2,3-dihydroxymethacrylic acid (i.e. 2-methylglyceric acid)) were detected, and their concentrations significantly increased after aqueous phase processing. In particular, the aqueous phase formation of 2-methylglyceric acid and trihydroxy-3-methylbutanal was correlated with the consumption of 2,3-dihydroxy-2-methyl-propanal, and 2-methylbutane-1,2,3,4-tetrol, respectively, and an aqueous phase mechanism was proposed accordingly. Overall, the aging effect observed here was rather small compared to previous studies, and this limited effect could possibly be explained by the lower liquid phase OH concentrations employed here, and/or the development of oligomers observed during aqueous phase processing.


Abstract Background A previous meta-analysis of 3 zinc acetate lozenge trials estimated that colds were on average 40% shorter for the zinc groups. However, the duration of colds is a time outcome, and survival analysis may be a more informative approach. The objective of this individual patient data (IPD) meta-analysis was to estimate the effect of zinc acetate lozenges on the rate of recovery from colds. Methods We analyzed IPD for 3 randomized placebo-controlled trials in which 80–92 mg/day of elemental zinc were administered as zinc acetate lozenges to 199 common cold patients. We used mixed-effects Cox regression to estimate the effect of zinc. Results Patients administered zinc lozenges recovered faster by rate ratio 3.1 (95% confidence interval, 2.1–4.7). The effect was not modified by age, sex, race, allergy, smoking, or baseline common cold severity. On the 5th day, 70% of the zinc patients had recovered compared with 27% of the placebo patients. Accordingly, 2.6 times more patients were cured in the zinc group. The difference also corresponds to the number needed to treat of 2.3 on the 5th day. None of the studies observed serious adverse effects of zinc. Conclusions The 3-fold increase in the rate of recovery from the common cold is a clinically important effect. The optimal formulation of zinc lozenges and an ideal frequency of their administration should be examined. Given the evidence of efficacy, common cold patients may be instructed to try zinc acetate lozenges within 24 hours of onset of symptoms.


CONTEXT
As men age, the prevalence of frailty increases whereas levels of androgens decline. Little is known about the relation between these factors.

OBJECTIVE
The aim of this study was to assess cross-sectional and longitudinal associations of estradiol, bioavailable estradiol, testosterone, bioavailable testosterone (bioT), and SHBG with frailty status.

DESIGN AND SETTING
The Osteoporotic Fractures in Men (MrOS) study was conducted at six U.S. clinical centers.

PARTICIPANTS
A total of 1469 community-dwelling men at least 65 yr old with baseline data participated; 1245 men had frailty status reassessed 4.1 yr later.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE
Proportional odds models estimated the likelihood of greater frailty status. Frail men had at least three of the following: weakness, slowness, low activity, exhaustion, and shrinking/sarcopenia; intermediate men had one or two criteria; and robust men had none. At follow-up, death was included as an additional ordinal outcome. Sex hormones were assayed by spectrometry/chromatographic methods.

RESULTS
In cross-sectional analyses, men in the lowest quartile of bioT had 1.39-fold (95% confidence interval, 1.02, 1.91) increased odds of greater frailty status compared to men in the highest quartile after adjustment for covariates including age, body size, health status, and medical conditions. In age-adjusted longitudinal analyses, men in the lowest quartile of bioT had 1.51-fold (95% confidence interval, 1.10, 2.07) increased odds of greater frailty status 4.1 yr later. This association was largely attenuated by adjustment for covariates. No other hormones were associated in a cross-sectional or longitudinal manner with frailty status after adjustment.

CONCLUSIONS
Low levels of bioT were independently associated with worse baseline frailty status. Frailty status should be considered as an outcome in trials of testosterone supplementation.


Using data from a Swiss German dialect syntax survey, this study aims to explore, in a spatially differentiated manner, the correlation between dialectal variation and geographic distances. A linguistic distance was expressed by a measure aggregated from 60 survey questions. To operationalize the possibility of language contact, Euclidean distance, as well as travel times in 2000, 1950 and 1850 between survey sites were used. Going beyond previous work by others, we also explore the covariation of geographic and linguistic distances at the local level, focusing on spatial subsets and individual survey sites, thus being able to paint a more differentiated picture. With the diverse physical landscape of Switzerland making an impact on potential language contact, we find that travel times are a better predictor than Euclidean distance for the syntactic variation in Swiss German dialects. However, on the local scale the difference is not always significant, depending on prevalent topography.


According to the popular democratic (PD) revolutionaries of the Philippines, socialism is not the cutting edge of revolution. Socialism cannot win the battle against capitalism if it does not undergo continuous rethinking and revision demanded by changing realities. What clearly sets socialism apart is its stress on equity and its social mode of appropriation of wealth and resources. However, its growth-oriented trajectory of organizing the economy does not fundamentally differ from that of capitalism; thus, it suffers from the same technological fixation that harms nature. Furthermore, the belief that armed struggle is necessary in order to wrest power from the ruling elite—a belief espoused by many armed socialist groups in the Philippines—is erroneous; armed struggle should serve the empowerment of unarmed millions who are involved in a whole range of revolutionary activities besides taking up arms. The legal struggle, meanwhile, offers a wider scope for popular participation and empowerment—its shortcomings may be addressed by armed struggle; reform and revolution feed on each other and form part of a continuum of giving power to people and communities.


The Monterey Bay region, with bathymetric features including Monterey Submarine Canyon and Sur Platform, has been a site for examination of generation, propagation and dissipation of the internal tide. Observations of propagation of the internal tide on the California continental margin and in Monterey Submarine Canyon are presented. Additionally, the development and sea-trials of the EM-POGO, a free-falling absolute velocity profiler which can be used to study the internal tide is detailed. EM-POGO: The EM-POGO is a low-cost and accurate velocity profiler. Electromagnetic current instrumentation has been added to Bathy Systems, Inc. POGO transport sondes to produce the EM-POGO. Velocity determined from measurements of motionally-induced electric fields generated by ocean currents moving through the vertical component of the Earth's magnetic field are added to the transport provided by the POGO. A refurbished EM-POGO collected 15 profiles; relative and absolute velocity uncertainty was &sim 1 cm s -1 and 0.5 – 5 cm s -1 , respectively, with 25-m vertical resolution. Internal tide: North of Sur Platform but south of Monterey Submarine Canyon, a short-duration survey and a multi-week timeseries measured northward energy flux in the mean, supporting model results indicating that topographic features off Point Sur generate strong internal tides observed in the canyon. Though dominated by low modes with O(100 km) horizontal wavelengths, semidiurnal energy fluxes, kinetic and potential energies show lateral variability on O(5 km) scales. Spatial variability results, in part, from interference patterns and the sharp delineation of beams with limited azimuthal extent. A simple two-source model of a first-mode interference pattern reproduces the most striking aspects of the observations. In Monterey Submarine Canyon energy fluxes are steered by canyon bathymetry and are consistent with a numerical model. Vertical profiles reveal predominantly along-canyon flux intensified in the bottom 500 m. A rough one-dimensional along-canyon energy budget based on energy-flux divergence, dissipation rates and barotropic-to-baroclinic energy conversion rates is constructed. Cross-canyon- integrated along-canyon flux decreases from 13 ± 3.4 MW at the deepest section (1500 m) to 5.6 ± 0.3 MW at the shallowest (900 m). The largest drops ( ∼ 7 MW and ∼ 4 MW) are around meanders. The one-dimensional flux budget is, on average, balanced.


This research aimed to evaluate the impact of land cover/use changes on watershed responses and hydrological processes by applying the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) distributed hydrologic model to the Buyukcekmece Water Basin of Istanbul Metropolitan city. SWAT model was run for two different scenarios for the 40-year period between 1973 and 2012, after completing calibration procedures under gauge-data scarce conditions. For the first scenario, 1990 dated Land cover/land use (LCLU) map and meteorological data obtained between 1973 and 2012 were used. For the second scenario, 2006 dated LCLU map and same meteorological data were used to analyze the impact of changing landscape characteristics on hydrological processes. In the selected watershed, LCLU changes started towards the end of the 1980s and reached a significant status in 2006; therefore, 1990 and 2006 dated LCLU maps are important to model human impact period in the watershed. Afterwards, LCLU changes within sub-basin level were investigated to quantify the effects of different types of land changes on the major hydrological components such as actual evapotranspiration, percolation, soil water, base flow, surface runoff and runoff. Our analysis indicated that, under the same climatic conditions, changes in land cover/use, specifically urbanization, played a considerable role in hydrological dynamics with changes on actual transpiration, base flow, surface runoff, runoff, percolation and soil water mainly due to urban and agricultural area changes. Among the different hydrological components analyzed at watershed level, percolation, ET and base flow were found to be highly sensitive to LCLU changes, whereas soil water was found as the least sensitive to same LCLU changes.


One of the most ambitious legacies of the 20th century was the universal commitment to ensure freedom from want as a human right. How far have we progressed; to what extent are countries across the world living up to this commitment? This book charts new territory in examining the extent to which countries meet their obligations to progressively realize social and economic rights -- the rights to education, food, health, housing, work and social security. States have long escaped accountability for these commitments by claiming inadequate resources. The authors develop an innovative evidence based index, the Social & Economic Rights Fulfillment (SERF) Index and Achievement Possibilities Frontier methodology, making possible for the first time apples-to-apples comparisons of performance across very differently situated countries and over time. The book provides an overall global picture of progress, regress and disparities amongst and within countries and explores the factors influencing performance -- including whether treaty and legal commitments, gender equity, democracy/autocracy, and economic growth, explain good performance -- revealing surprising results. The data provide empirical evidence to resolve some long standing controversies over the principle of 'progressive realization'. The book concludes by observing how the SERF Index can be used in evidence based social science research, policy making and accountability procedures to advance social and economic rights. By defying the boundaries of traditional research disciplines, this work fundamentally advances our knowledge about the status of and factors promoting social and economic rights fulfillment at the dawn of the 21st century. Available in OSO:


The quest for designing efficient heterogeneous catalytic systems for tandem oxidative cyclization reactions has provided a great impetus to research efforts, as it enables the step-economic construction of complex heterocyclic molecules as well as confers the benefits of a facile catalytic recovery. In the present study, we disclose a new core–shell-structured organic–inorganic hybrid copper nanocatalyst fabricated via the covalent grafting of 2,2′-dipyridyl ketone ligand on amine-functionalized silica-encapsulated magnetite nanoparticles, followed by its metallation with cupric acetate for the tandem oxidative cyclization of amines and β-ketoesters, leading to the production of biologically active polysubstituted oxazole moieties. This programmed catalytic protocol proceeds via the formation of intermolecular C–C and C–N bonds by single-step synthesis and accommodates a broad combination of reaction coupling partners.


This RFC is being distributed to members of the Internet community in
order to make available some "hints" which will allow new network
participants to understand how the direction of the Internet is set,
how to acquire online information and how to be a good Internet
neighbor. While the information discussed may not be relevant to the
research problems of the Internet, it may be interesting to a number
of researchers and implementors. No standards are defined or specified
in this memo.


The Civil War forced America finally to confront the contradiction between its founding values and human slavery. At the center of this historic confrontation was Abraham Lincoln. By the time this Illinois politician had risen to the office of president, the dilemma of slavery had expanded to the question of all African Americans' future. In this fascinating new book Paul Escott considers the evolution of the president's thoughts on race in relation to three other, powerful - and often conflicting - voices. Lincoln's fellow Republicans Charles Sumner and Montgomery Blair played crucial roles in the shaping of their party. While both Sumner and Blair were opposed to slavery, their motivations reflected profoundly different approaches to the issue. Blair's antislavery stance stemmed from a racist dedication to remove African Americans from the country altogether. Sumner, in contrast, opposed slavery as a crusader for racial equality and a passionate abolitionist. Lincoln maintained close personal relationships with both men as he wrestled with the slavery question. In addition to these antislavery voices, Escott also weaves into his narrative the other extreme, of which Lincoln was politically aware: the virulent racism and hierarchical values that motivated not only the Confederates but surprisingly many Northerners and which were embodied by the president's eventual assassin, John Wilkes Booth. Sumner, Blair, and violent racists like Booth each represent forces with which Lincoln had to contend as he presided over a brutal civil war and faced the issues of slavery and equality lying at its root. Other books and films have provided glimpses of the atmosphere in which the president created his Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln's Dilemma evokes more fully and brings to life the men Lincoln worked with, and against, as he moved racial equality forward.


Synopsis-An investigation of the effect of forming variables on handsheet strength properties showed that stock dilution, shear gradients and controlled initial drainage are factors that have major effects on sheet structure and properties . A better understanding of the causes of changes in paper strength properties resulted from the introduction of a new concept of basic sheet properties . One basic property is the specific tensile strength . This represents the average tensile strength throughout a sheet, in contrast with the standard tensile strength, which is generally a measure of strength in the weakest part of the test samples . The well-known loss of tensile strength that occurs when handsheets are formed from stock at higher concentrations is shown to be caused mainly by small-scale substance variability, since the specific tensile strength is essentially constant over the same range of concentrations . The effect of substance variability on other strength properties was examined by means of uniform base layer sheets with superimposed substance spots . The spots were used to obtain a known and reproducible pattern of substance variability. Notwithstanding the increased substance of the spotted sheets, they were found to be physically weaker in all properties except tearing strength . Substance variability was found also to be responsible for the reciprocal dependence of tearing strength on bursting and tensile strengths. As a test of the practical importance of dilution and shear gradients, Fourdrinier machine trials were run in which the water removal capacity was increased considerably by the application of fan-produced vacuum under the forming zone . Sheet properties were found to be still improving up to the maximum flow box dilution or speed set by other machine limits such as drying and stock pumping.


This paper presents a distributed memory architecture for dedicated hardware automatically synthesized from Erlang programs. Our team had developed a framework for generating embedded systems controllers whose behavior was specified by a subset of Erlang, where each process was mapped into hardware (a logic circuit) running independently of the circuits for the other processes. However, the resulting hardware was not of practical use because it shared a single main memory potentially accessed by all the circuits for the processes simultaneously. To address this issue, in this paper, the main memory is partitioned into banks so that each process can access its own memory independently of the other processes. In order to keep the interconnections for message passing to a practical size, a bus architecture is employed where send requests are arbitrated by an arbiter (logic circuit). In order to make the resulting hardware as small as possible, a garbage collection circuit is shared among the circuits for the processes also under the control of the arbiter. From a simple Erlang specification, Verilog HDL codes for necessary hardware to construct a system has been generated.


The formation of the dust cloud that is associated with low-level helicopter operations in desert environments has been simulated using the Vorticity Transport Model together with a coupled model to represent the entrainment and subsequent transport of particulate matter through the flow. A simple thin-layer theory, supported by simulations performed using the more physically-representative numerical model, is used to explain the formation of characteristic sheet- and filament-like structures in the dust cloud in terms of the interactions between individual vortical filaments and the ground. In parts of the flow, for instance near the ground vortex that is formed under the leading edge of the rotor when in forward flight, the dust cloud becomes more space-filling than sheet-like in character, and the theory suggests that this is a result of the dust distribution having been processed by multiple vortices over a significant period of time. The distribution of the regions on the ground plane from which significant entrainment of dust into the flow takes place is shown to be influenced strongly by the unstable nature of the vortical structures within the flow. It is suggested that the effect of this vortical instability, when integrated over the timescales that are characteristic of the formation of the dust cloud, is to de-sensitize the gross characteristics of the dustcloud to the details of the wake structure at its inception on the rotor blades. This suggests that the formation of the brownout cloud may be relatively insensitive to the detailed design of the blades of the rotors and may thus be influenced only by less subtle characteristics of the helicopter system.


Nanomaterials are a class of emerging contaminants that are increasingly found in industry and the environment. In environmental media, their detection is often complicated by: their low concentration, the presence of high concentrations of natural colloids and the complexity of the matrix. Enhanced darkfield microscopy (EDM) coupled to hyperspectral analysis (HSI) is a recently developed tool that can theoretically be used to facilitate the localization and identification of nanoparticles and follow their fate in situ. The objective of this work was to evaluate the capacity of EDM-HSI to evaluate the fate of silver nanoparticles in wastewaters and biosolids. By coupling EDM with a pixel by pixel spectral analysis, transformation kinetics (attributed to the adsorption of organic matter) of several different silver nanoparticles (40, 80 and 100 nm) with different coatings (citrate and polyvinylpyrrolidone) could be analysed on a particle by particle basis in wastewaters. Results demonstrated that when spiked into complex systems containing natural organic matter, many of the nanoparticles were rapidly transformed (over a period of 2 hours), as shown by a wavelength shift attributed to their plasmonic resonance (450 to 570 nm). Based upon complementary results obtained by dynamic light scattering (DLS) and single particle inductively coupled plasma spectrometry (SP-ICP-MS), it was possible to attribute the changes not to particle aggregation or dissolution but rather to the adsorption of natural organic matter on the surface of the nanoparticle. The paper will demonstrate that the spectral properties of the nanoparticles in complex systems are very different from those in simple systems.


A 2-factor-plus-triangles graph is the union of two $2$-regular graphs $G_1$ and $G_2$ with the same vertices, such that $G_2$ consists of disjoint triangles. Let ${\cal G}$ be the family of such graphs. These include the famous "cycle-plus-triangles" graphs shown to be $3$-choosable by Fleischner and Stiebitz. The independence ratio of a graph in ${\cal G}$ may be less than $1/3$; but achieving the minimum value $1/4$ requires each component to be isomorphic to the 12-vertex "Du–Ngo" graph. Nevertheless, ${\cal G}$ contains infinitely many connected graphs with independence ratio less than $4/15$. For each odd $g$ there are infinitely many connected graphs in ${\cal G}$ such that $G_1$ has girth $g$ and the independence ratio of $G$ is less than $1/3$. Also, when $12$ divides $n$ (and $n\ne12$) there is an $n$-vertex graph in ${\cal G}$ such that $G_1$ has girth $n/2$ and $G$ is not $3$-colorable. Finally, unions of two graphs whose components have at most $s$ vertices are $s$-choosable.


Imagine a system of government where the President is accorded a great deal of deference in matters of legislation. A combination of these two elements - "president and legislation" - immediately gives us cause for pause, considering our deliberate tripartite system of checks and balances. Imagine also the advancement of a completely new technology, like cloning. As industry works to perfect the new technology, the question inevitably becomes who is best placed to regulate this industry. As we explore our options, should one of the options be for the Office of the President to set regulations? These are the questions that areas, such as biotechnology, faces or will face. As biotechnology has evolved, the public has become increasingly concerned that processes for approving bio-tech foods are not transparent. The power to approve biotech foods is delegated to administrative agencies, which receive considerable deference from the courts. Added to this judicial deference is the documented involvement of the President's office in setting policy in this area. Justice Kagan labeled Presidential involvement in administrative agencies' decisions as "Presidential Administration." "Presidential Administration," according to Justice Kagan, refers to the President directly setting policies by providing directives to administrative agencies. Tracing this practice from President Reagan to President Clinton, Justice Kagan explains that presidents have regularly used the administrative process to set policies as well as take ownership of administrative policies. This Article explores the issues inherent in presidential control of administrative regulatory processes related to genetically modified foods. In that context, especially, congressional silence is unsatisfactory because it unevenly shifts the balance of power to influential interest groups and to the President's office. This awkward balancing has been made all the more evident by Monsanto Co. v. Geertson Seeds Farms, the Supreme Court's first decision regarding genetically altered crops. Monsanto and other cases illustrate the legal and ethical complexities of balancing of the public's interest with that of biotech companies and monitoring federal agencies. Thus far, the balancing of interests has erred in favor of biotech companies. The standards applied by the courts for evaluating biotech foods are insufficient and vague. What is more, the procedures in place for overseeing and regulating biotech products are needlessly complex and inefficient. This Article points out deficiencies in the regulation of bioengineered foods and demonstrates that regulating agencies have sponsored a policy that fails to concentrate on the potential harm to human health; rather, the policy focuses on market aggrandizement. The "substantial equivalence" doctrine applied by regulating agencies when evaluating bioengineered products is under particular scrutiny in this Article. Under the substantial equivalence test, bioengineered products have been assumed to be safe by virtue of the initial presidential command, construing bioengineered foods as equivalent to natural foods. This standard, however, is a false equivalence since bioengineered products contain foreign and unknown agents. Continued practice of this type of Presidential control, without consistent input from experts, could lead to greater harm to the population. Considering the high stakes, a more precautionary standard is warranted.Accordingly, this article is divided into the following parts: Part I discusses the application of the Presidential ad-ministration doctrine to biotechnology; it identifies the flaws with that particular approach and explains why a better approach is needed. Part II outlines the sources of laws and the agencies responsible for regulating genetically altered foods. Part III discusses the Supreme Court's first ruling regarding genetically modified crops in Monsanto Co. v. Geertson Seeds Farms as an example of the conflicts congressional silence creates. Part IV discusses problems with the current judicial standard of review applied to agencies' decisions. Part V explores the detrimental impact of biotechnology on poor farmers, both in the United States and abroad. Part VI proposes better paradigms for dealing with bioengineered foods and calls for specific congressional guidance in that area. Finally, Part VII presents the European approach as a potential model for grassroots lobbying.


We identify two states of stress induced in waveguides fabricated by femtosecond lasers in fused silica and show how they can be relieved by annealing. In-plane stress and stress concentration are revealed through birefringence and loss measurements. Another kind of laser-induced stress appears in the form of swelling of the glass surface when waveguides are written near the surface and is a manifestation of confined rapid material quenching. By annealing the sample we reduce the losses by approximately 30% (at 633 nm) and decrease the birefringence by a factor of 4 in fused silica.


On June 8 and 9, 2003 Poland's citizens voted in a national referendum to decide on their country's entry into the European Union. In all, 58.8 percent of those eligible to vote took part in the referendum, with 13,512,612 (77.5 percent) supporting accession and 3,936,012 (22.5 percent) opposed. (1) The vote was seen by some as ending an extraordinary chapter in Poland's modern history. The first words of that chapter had been set down in June 1989 when the Solidarity movement won an extraordinary victory over the ruling communist party in special parliamentary elections. That vote led to the collapse of the Leninist, Soviet imposed regime that had run Poland since the end of World War II. Solidarity's incredible triumph was then quickly followed by the end of communist rule throughout Eastern Europe, and most spectacularly, in 1991, with the disintegration of the Soviet Union itself. (2) Poland's president, Aleksander Kwasniewski, declared on learning of the results of the referendum, that "We are returning to the place which Poles and Poland have deserved to have in our 1,000 years of history." Affirming that he had been deeply moved by the vote, the president offered special words of thanks to Pope John Paul II for his strong support of Poland's entry into the European Union, which the Polish-born pontiff had described as nothing less than "an act of historic justice." (3) The referendum was a crucial element in the process by which Poland, the largest of the ten states that have been granted membership in the expanded European Union, became a member of the hitherto fifteen state body. (4) This process has had a long history of its own, one worth noting here. Ever since the formation of a system of democratic government in 1989, Poland's leaders have in fact pursued a set of policies aimed at integrating the country and its people with the pluralist, democratic, and free market-based societies of Western Europe and its transatlantic neighbors, headed by the United States and Canada. Internally, Poland has undergone a thoroughgoing process of democracy-building and been committed to restructuring its economy on the basis of competitive, market-based principles. Externally, Poland has sought full integration into the western democratic community of nations by seeking membership in its key transnational institutions. And, despite all the many and serious travails that Poland's citizens have had to endure, first under the failed regime of communism, and afterward, in their very difficult transition to a free market economy, Poland's elected leaders and the great majority of its citizens have remained resolutely committed to keeping faith with these broad policy goals. Thus, in the years since 1989, Poland has developed a genuine and robust democratic political system of government. Elections in the country, for the national parliament and the presidency, and at the local government level as well, have been frequent and regular, free and unfettered; most important, their results have always been respected by those who lost their campaigns. And, in spite of the country's roller-coaster-like economic experience during these same years--down into the early 1990s, up high until the late 1990's and then again very far down in the years since--Poland has continued to make genuine strides forward in privatizing its economy, seeking to maintain the system's internal competitiveness, and opening its borders to foreign trade and investment. On the integration side of its policies since 1989, Poland moved successfully to gain entry into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO Alliance, achieving full membership status in NATO in 1999. At the same time, each successive Polish government in office since 1989 has worked hard to win admission into the European Union. There have been differences between Poland's experience in becoming integrated into NATO and the EU and these merit a brief mention. …


The central claim of the thesis is that contemporary painting can be productively considered and made through a renewed investigation of syntax. Beginning with a detailed examination of Jonathan Lasker's work, I argue that a recomposed concept of syntax as a critical method distinguishes what I term 'syntactical painting' from modernist formalism and postmodern quotation. Looking to Rosalind Krauss' writing on Pablo Picasso, I discuss the mutability of the sign; and through Tomma Abts' use of shadow I rework Clement Greenberg's pejorative term 'homeless representation' into a positive avenue of enquiry. I then consider an alternative idea of syntax, identifiable in Daniel Buren, Robert Ryman and Wade Guyton, that works from outside of the frame. Here, I contend that using real space to critique painting fails to replace internalised invention, and that a continued resistance towards illusion has run its course. In the text, I rethink modernist assertions of objectness over imagery, along with Michael Fried's absorption/theatricality concepts, to propose Duccio's diagrammatic space and Frank Stella's reconciliation of flatness with the frame as models for painting whereby the viewer can clearly experience syntax. Such discussions reveal how certain meta-reflexive operations, which are otherwise largely neglected by critical discourse, can be reappraised via syntactical painting.

The thesis accompanies my painting practice, in which I use soft films of transparent oil to pictorialise the materiality of the prepared field. The paintings are meticulously rendered, and appear as though drawn or printed. I use bands of colour to bring a particular delicacy to the figuring of the frame, which is achieved through transparency and trompe l'oeil illusion. I often conceive of painting as a two-dimensional stage space that curtails fictive distance as it represents it, and as an abstract diagram for the re-presentation of photography's installation shot of painting and the gallery.


Recently, there has been a lot of interest in achieving a broader perspective on prosperity and the development of countries. This study is about a composite index for describing and monitoring developments in the life situation of the Dutch population. Since 1974 this Life Situation Index (LSI) is used by the Netherlands Institute for Social Research/SCP to measure objective aspects of the individual life situation (realised wellbeing). In the study the (international) context and the choices made are described and discussed. The LSI is composed of indicators from eight life domains: housing, health, leisure activity, consumer durables, sport activity, vacation, social participation and mobility. The objective of the index is to be policy-relevant, describe the life situation as a whole, and to make progress or deterioration of the life situation visible. Trends must be visible not only for the Netherlands as a whole, but also for various social groups in Dutch soci ety. The description of the life situation is placed in a broader framework of background information. This framework, in which the individual life situation takes centre stage, also includes determinants of the life situation (including resources), the environment and the use of public services. In the broader framework we also look at subjective indicators and assume that peoples life situation affects their happiness and satisfaction. In the study, the most important choices and considerations underlying the current index are discussed. First, the choice of domains and indicators for the life situation. The selection of domains and indicators since the 1970s is based on the (prevailing) literature and on discussions within the OECD and the social indicators movement. The choice is also inspired by the policy relevance that the domains should have. In part, the choice is also based on face validity. In this study the choice of domains has been calibrated to internationally available indices and monitoring systems and to what people themselves regard as important. Second, discussed is the reason why an index is constructed and how this is done. Combining indicators into a composite index offers added value above the use of loose indicators because an index is helpful in terms of communication, makes accumulation effects visible, makes complex concepts more understandable, and makes it easier to compare groups with each other. To combine the indicators of LSI, non linear canonical correlation analysis is used. Furthermore, some stability and sensitivity analyses are presented. The stability analyses conducted in this study show that the weights are rather stable through the years as well as for different social groups. However, using or not using weights does not have much impact on the results. The main advantage of using weights are: the determination of the correct sequence for nominal indicators, the extent of difference within that sequence, and the insight t hey give into any diminishing returns (more participation is not always better). Over the past 30 years the life situation of the Dutch population has improved. This improvement has occurred among all social groups, but not for all groups to the same extent. Besides: people with a good life situation are happier and more satisfied than people with a bad life situation.


This paper describes negation in contemporary Votic – a near-extinct Finnic language. All the data come from fieldwork carried out in the last decade. We analyse different aspects of the negation system, including such typologically important features as expression of the person and number of the negative construction by the negative auxiliary verb, while the main verb expresses the tense and mood characteristics; the formation of the Votic prohibitive and its classification in the World Atlas of Language Structures; a specific system of negative pronouns; the use of the abessive suffix only in verbal forms; negative conjunctions that can conjugate. The paper also includes a short overview of the changes in the system of negation in contemporary Votic as compared to previous descriptions.


Youth homelessness is experienced by youth between ages of 16-24, where they are either homeless or at risk of becoming homeless. These youth typically lack social structures, stability, and sense of security in their lives. They also face many issues such as drugs, violence, sexually transmitted diseases, and early pregnancy. In the past decade, youth homelessness has become an increasingly important issue in Canada. Many organizations such as Covenant House in Toronto and Crisis House in Calgary are designed specifically to help homeless youth in finding shelter spaces. However, in smaller cities such as Kingston, there is a lack of reports on the conditions of homeless youth. The aim of this master's report is to fill the gaps and provide a research base for future studies. The report provides a detailed literature review on the subject of youth homelessness, and an analysis of how agencies have met the needs of homeless youth in Kingston based on interviews with youth and agencies to identify gaps in services. The agencies interviewed include Kingston Youth Shelter (KYS), Kingston Youth Employment Services, and Passage House.


The surface of eukaryotic cells is decorated with carbohydrates that serve as discriminating markers in numerous cell, tissue, and stage-specific processes including cell recognition, adhesion and migration, and cell signaling. Seppo et al. report that mutation of a gene that encodes a Toll-like receptor (TLR) Tollo (the Drosophila homolog of mammalian Toll-8) alters glycosylation in Drosophila. TLRs function in development in Drosophila and in the innate immune response of Drosophila and vertebrates by transducing pattern recognition signals that are frequently glycan-based (see the review by Dunne and O'Neill). Recognition of an N-linked oligosaccharide epitope in neural tissue by a specific antibody was abolished in flies harboring a disrupted tollo gene. However, the epitope was still recognized in nonneural tissue. Tollo is expressed in embryonic ectoderm during periods of maximal contact with neural precursor cells, but then disappears once neurons segregate from the ectoderm. Flies lacking Tollo exhibited axon defasciculation errors. Neural-specific glycosylation could be rescued by expression of transgenic tollo in nonneural cells. The study suggests that Tollo-expressing cells modulate glycan expression in adjacent cells, possibly through binding to a neuronal surface protein. This interaction may produce appropriate spatial and temporal patterns of cell-specific glycosylation during development and offers a broad mechanism by which TLRs could operate in cell surveillance and recognition. A. Seppo, P. Matani, M. Sharrow, M. Tiemeyer, Induction of neuron-specific glycosylation by Tollo/Toll-8, a Drosophila Toll-like receptor expressed in non-neural cells. Development 130, 1439-1448 (2003) [Abstract] [Full Text] A. Dunne, L. A. J. O'Neill, The interleukin-1 receptor/Toll-like receptor superfamily: Signal transduction during inflammation and host defense. Sci. STKE 2003, re3 (2003). [Full Text]


Purpose: The article deals with the essence and structure of the state mechanism for the organization and conduct of public works. Special features of forming legal and socioeconomic conditions of implementing the right to employment of unemployed persons are examined. Design/methodology/approach: The principal role in the organization of public works belongs to state institutions authorized to manage flows of funds. The key entities making managerial decisions on the organization of public works and their financial planning are state authorities (local state administrations), local self-government bodies (executive committees of village, town, and city councils), and territorial bodies of central executive body (bodies of State Employment Service). The source of public works financing is local budgets, financial resources of employers, the Fund of compulsory state social unemployment insurance. Findings: The basis for local authorities' decision-making is various territorial employment programs approved by the relevant local authorities. Practical Implications: In order to ensure the effective conduct of public works, it is proposed to amend the norms of authoritative and regulatory acts resulting in duplication of pecuniary liabilities by means of equal distribution between the local budget and the Fund of compulsory state social unemployment insurance. Originality/value: Public works are regarded as a social service that is available to unemployed citizens through the payment of insurance fees during their employment.


CONTEXT
In a previous study we reported that anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH), a marker of ovarian reserve, is positively associated with breast cancer risk, consistent with other studies.

OBJECTIVE
Assess whether risk factors for breast cancer are correlates of AMH concentration.

DESIGN
Cross-sectional.

PARTICIPANTS
3831 healthy premenopausal women (aged 21-57, 87% aged 35-49).

SETTING
Ten cohort studies, general population.

RESULTS
Adjusting for age and cohort, we observed positive associations of AMH with age at menarche (p<0.0001) and parity (p=0.0008), and an inverse association with hysterectomy/partial oophorectomy (p=0.0008). Compared to women of normal weight (BMI 18.5-24.9 kg/m 2, AMH was lower (relative geometric mean difference 27%, p<0.0001) among women who were obese (BMI>30). Current oral contraceptive use and current/former smoking were associated with lower AMH concentration than never use (40% and 12% lower, respectively, p<0.0001). We observed higher AMH concentrations among women who had had a benign breast biopsy (15% higher, p=0.03), a surrogate for benign breast disease, an association that has not been reported. In analyses stratified by age (<40/≥40), associations of AMH with BMI and oral contraceptives were similar in younger and older women, while associations with the other factors (menarche, parity, hysterectomy/partial oophorectomy, smoking, and benign breast biopsy) were limited to women ≥40 (p-interaction<0.05).

CONCLUSION
This is the largest study of AMH and breast cancer risk factors among women from the general population (not presenting with infertility), and suggests that most of the associations are limited to women over 40, who are approaching menopause and whose AMH concentration is declining.


Piezo valves are often a better alternative to conventional solenoid valves, especially in the areas of flow and pressure control and as directly controlled proportional valves. They are small, lightweight, extremely precise, very durable, incredibly fast and above all they save energy. For example, piezo valves do not need any energy to maintain a switching status. They therefore generate virtually no heat. In ATEX applications, many piezo valves are classified as intrinsically safe. What is more, piezo valves can potentially be operated without any noise. Another key advantage is that they always work proportionally – and are very wear-resistant too.


Abstract Objectives: Data on the glycaemic index (GI) of foods commonly consumed in Botswana are lacking. The present study aimed to evaluate the GI of some of the staple carbohydrate-rich foods eaten in Botswana. Design, setting and subjects: Fifty university student volunteers were divided into five groups. Members of each group consumed different test foods based on wheat, maize, sorghum, millet and morama beans to supply 50 g of available carbohydrate after 10-12 hours of overnight fasting. GI was determined using a standard method with white bread. Outcome measures: The GI values were calculated after measuring blood glucose levels before and after ingestion at 0, 15, 30, 45, 60, 90 and 120 minutes. Results: The results showed a clear variation in the GI values for the same food when consumed by different individuals. In addition, variations were observed in the GI values of test foods based on the same material. On average, wheat-based foods exhibited the highest GI values (103.1), followed by millet-based foods (95.3), sorghum-based foods (92.5), maize-based foods (9.1) and morama-based foods (86.4). Of the tested food, mapakiwa (wheat-based) had the highest GI (110.6) whereas roasted morama had the lowest GI (82.8). Conclusion: These results could form the basis of dietary advice to consumers, and particularly patients with diabetes. Further studies are needed on more of the commonly consumed foods in Botswana.


There are many existing programs and initiatives in Uganda supporting small businesses, but tend to suffer from a number of weaknesses. In particular typically small businesses find it difficult to do research and development; commercialize their results in markets (innovation) as fast as they should. For micro, small & medium enterprises to be dully competitive in a competitive economic environment requires that they develop internal capabilities to effectively assimilate, use and adapt product and process technologies for their businesses to survive on an ongoing basis. To overcome this drawback, the concept of Business Incubation has been proposed. This concept has gained large interest in the research community. The key idea is to create and nurture new businesses for growth by providing services and infrastructure required by utilizing the external knowledge sources (open innovation) and triple-helix model which assist formation of business and industrial clusters. A business incubator is an organization that supports the creation and growth of new businesses by providing services and infrastructure that is required by the targeted clients. Given that most firms in developing countries start too small to compete especially in international markets, a pre-requisite to industrial development, governments and policy makers should give particular attention to the constraints and needs of MSMEs. This can be done by adopting a mix of policies and framework conditions to reduce on the obstacles that hamper technological innovation, collaboration and business growth. In particular is access to finance and enhancing technology and business capacity development through training, linkages and networks. This Licentiate thesis discusses and reviews the initiatives and programs aimed at supporting the development of MSMEs with a view to stimulate industrial development in Uganda. The main aim of this research is to examine the process of business incubation and explain the contribution of open innovation business incubators to entrepreneurs/ start-up firms within the broader context of developing entrepreneurship, promoting science, technology and innovation and creating employment. This research focuses on the roles and relationships of government, university and research institutions and the private sector as sources of knowledge for technological innovations. Literature review, theory understanding, and participatory methods including group discussions with questionnaires, meetings and interviews, were used to achieve the objectives. From the findings, it was revealed among MSMEs that due to their sizes, limited managerial and technological skills, and inadequate functional business support services have had adverse effects on their upgrading and growth. There was little linkage and follow up between industry and other public research sectors i.e. government agencies and higher institutions although there are quite a number of support institutions with poor coordination. The research analyzed a wide range of issues that are related to the desired structural transformation of the Ugandan economy towards industrialization process. Finally it will propose strategies for the most appropriate model for Uganda.


Researchers and research organizations are under increasing pressure to demonstrate that their work contributes to positive change and helps solve pressing societal challenges. There is a simultaneous trend towards more engaged transdisciplinary research that is complexity-aware and appreciates that change happens through systems transformation, not only through technological innovation. Appropriate evaluation approaches are needed to evidence research impact and generate learning for continual improvement. This is challenging in any research field, but especially for research that crosses disciplinary boundaries and intervenes in complex systems. Moreover, evaluation challenges at the project scale are compounded at the programme scale. The Forest, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA) research programme serves as an example of this evolution in research approach and the resulting evaluation challenges. FTA research is responding to the demand for greater impact with more engaged research following multiple pathways. However, research impact assessment in the CGIAR (Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research) was developed in a technology-centric context where counterfactual approaches of causal inference (experimental and quasi-experimental) predominate. Relying solely on such approaches is inappropriate for evaluating research contributions that target policy and institutional change and systems transformation. Instead, we propose a multifaceted, multi-scale, theory-based evaluation approach. This includes nested project- and programme-scale theories of change (ToCs); research quality assessment; theory-based outcome evaluations to empirically test ToCs and assess policy, institutional, and practice influence; experimental and quasi-experimental impact of FTA-informed 'large n' innovations; ex ante impact assessment to estimate potential impacts at scale; and logically and plausibly linking programme-level outcomes to secondary data on development and conservation status.


BACKGROUND: In pediatric settings, parents often raise concerns about possible gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), yet the specificity of these concerns are not well studied. OBJECTIVE: To conduct a meta-analysis of research investigating GI symptoms among children with ASD. METHODS: We searched Medline, PsycINFO, and PubMed databases (1980–2012) in peer-reviewed journals. Analysis involved studies with a comparison group presenting quantitative data on GI symptoms using combinations of terms for ASD and GI indicators. The systematic search yielded 15 studies. We calculated effect sizes and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) using a random-effects model. RESULTS: Children with ASD experience significantly more general GI symptoms than comparison groups, with a standardized mean difference of 0.82 (0.24) and a corresponding odds ratio (OR) of 4.42 (95% CI, 1.90–10.28). Analysis also indicated higher rates of diarrhea (OR, 3.63; 95% CI, 1.82–7.23), constipation (OR, 3.86; 95% CI, 2.23–6.71), and abdominal pain (OR, 2.45; 95% CI, 1.19–5.07). CONCLUSIONS: Results indicate greater prevalence of GI symptoms among children with ASD compared with control children. Identified studies involved high methodological variability and lack of comprehensive data prohibited analysis of GI pathophysiologies (eg, gastroesophageal reflux) typically associated with organic etiologies, limiting conclusions about the underpinnings of the observed association. Future research must address critical questions about the causes and long-term impact of GI symptoms in ASD. Such analyses will require more systematic research and clinical activities, including improved diagnostic screening, standardized assessment, and exploration of potential moderators (eg, dietary restrictions).


Synapses may undergo variable changes during plasticity because of the variability of spike patterns such as temporal stochasticity and spatial randomness. Here, we call the variability of synaptic weight changes during plasticity to be efficacy variability. In this paper, we investigate how four aspects of spike pattern statistics (i.e., synchronous firing, burstiness/regularity, heterogeneity of rates and heterogeneity of cross-correlations) influence the efficacy variability under pair-wise additive spike-timing dependent plasticity (STDP) and synaptic homeostasis (the mean strength of plastic synapses into a neuron is bounded), by implementing spike shuffling methods onto spike patterns self-organized by a network of excitatory and inhibitory leaky integrate-and-fire (LIF) neurons. With the increase of the decay time scale of the inhibitory synaptic currents, the LIF network undergoes a transition from asynchronous state to weak synchronous state and then to synchronous bursting state. We first shuffle these spike patterns using a variety of methods, each designed to evidently change a specific pattern statistics; and then investigate the change of efficacy variability of the synapses under STDP and synaptic homeostasis, when the neurons in the network fire according to the spike patterns before and after being treated by a shuffling method. In this way, we can understand how the change of pattern statistics may cause the change of efficacy variability. Our results are consistent with those of our previous study which implements spike-generating models on converging motifs. We also find that burstiness/regularity is important to determine the efficacy variability under asynchronous states, while heterogeneity of cross-correlations is the main factor to cause efficacy variability when the network moves into synchronous bursting states (the states observed in epilepsy).


Drawing upon historical research and recent archaeological discoveries, this book brings to life the events and personalities of the ancient realm of Galloway. This mysterious region of South-West Scotland has for centuries attracted pilgrims to its holy places, especially Whithorn, ever since St Ninian founded Candida Casa in the early-Christian era. Galloway's vicissitudes began in Roman times, when the territory was occupied by Britons who had more in common with the people of what is now Wales than they did with their Northern neighbours, the Picts and the Scots. A few centuries later, however, the rulers of Northumbria held sway over Galloway, binding the two provinces in religion and culture. But Galloway's recognition of shared interests was not as strong as its fierce sense of identity. The region stubbornly opposed Anglo-Norman domination, and gave dour resistance to being assimilated into the kingdom of Scotland. In this book, there emerges a dual-natured portrait of Galloway, conveyed in the author's handling of the medieval character. The figures described are men notorious for being savage, lecherous and irreligious; and yet, this in a part of Scotland widely known for its holy shrines. In the past ten years, the number of visitors to Whithorn has increased to 30,000 annually, all of them eager to experience the historical atmosphere and culture of this beautiful area.


Attending to a task-relevant location changes how neural activity oscillates in the alpha band (8–13Hz) in posterior visual cortical areas. However, a clear understanding of the relationships between top-down attention, changes in alpha oscillations in visual cortex, and attention performance are still poorly understood. Here, we tested the degree to which the posterior alpha power tracked the locus of attention, the distribution of attention, and how well the topography of alpha could predict the locus of attention. We recorded magnetoencephalographic (MEG) data while subjects performed an attention demanding visual discrimination task that dissociated the direction of attention from the direction of a saccade to indicate choice. On some trials, an endogenous cue predicted the target's location, while on others it contained no spatial information. When the target's location was cued, alpha power decreased in sensors over occipital cortex contralateral to the attended visual field. When the cue did not predict the target's location, alpha power again decreased in sensors over occipital cortex, but bilaterally, and increased in sensors over frontal cortex. Thus, the distribution and the topography of alpha reliably indicated the locus of covert attention. Together, these results suggest that alpha synchronization reflects changes in the excitability of populations of neurons whose receptive fields match the locus of attention. This is consistent with the hypothesis that alpha oscillations reflect the neural mechanisms by which top-down control of attention biases information processing and modulate the activity of neurons in visual cortex.


Accurate modeling of the complete stress-strain relationship of confined and unconfined concrete is of vital importance in predicting the overall flexural behavior of reinforced concrete structures. The analysis-oriented models, which utilize the dilation characteristics of confined concretes for stress-strain relationship prediction, are well recognized for their versatility in such modeling applications. However, the assumption adopted by this type of models, that the axial compressive stress and strain of fiber reinforced polymer (FRP)-confined concrete at a given lateral strain are the same as those in concrete actively confined with a confining pressure equal to that supplied by the FRP shell, has recently been demonstrated experimentally to be inaccurate for high-strength concrete (HSC). The results of the said experimental study indicate that, under the same conditions, FRP confinement provides a lower strength enhancement for HSC compared to that provided by active confinement. To develop an accurate model that can describe the experimentally observed behavior, two large test databases were used to closely investigate the relationships between the axial stress-strain behaviors of companion actively confined and FRP-confined concretes. Based on these observations a new approach is developed to establish the axial stress difference between the actively confined and FRP-confined concretes. Finally, a unified model is proposed to describe the stress-strain relationships of actively confined and FRP-confined concretes.