This paper investigates the relationship between the state and India's rural informal sector by focusing on the collective mobilizations of middle-sized agricultural producers in Western Uttar Pradesh. These cultivators are involved in an economic sector which is at the same time capitalist, largely informal but also, to some extent, state-regulated. Through their mobilizations organized by the Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU), they have attempted to influence state regulation of agricultural markets, obtaining increased input subsidies and better procurement prices for their produce, and thus an increase in the rates of return and profitability of their farming activity. The paper conceptualizes the modality of production of these farmers as 'subsidized capitalism', alluding to the self-employed and self-funded producers with holdings large enough to support a pair of bullocks defined as 'bullock capitalists' by Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph (1987), while denoting the crucial role of public subsidies in preserving this faction of informal agrarian capitalism. The paper also points to the ambivalent relationship between the 'subsidized capitalists' of Western Uttar Pradesh and the state: although they seek protection from the central government in the context of globalization, they confront and contest local state institutions by deploying collective strategies to distort local regulations of agricultural markets.


As disability service providers become familiar with assistive technology (AT), some devices that were originally designed to meet the needs of a specific disability, are being used with a broader range of individuals (e.g., voice recognition systems for students with learning disabilities). To determine (a) the most frequently used AT devices in postsecondary disability services, and (b) which devices are used across categories of disability; survey data was collected nationwide from postsecondary disability service providers (n=163). Respondents reported frequent use of voice recognition systems, reading machines, frequency modulation systems (FM) and text enlargement systems. Individuals with visual and hearing impairments used AT most frequently. Individuals with psychiatric disabilities and other health impairments used AT the least. Recommendations regarding AT and service delivery are included. ********** Students with disabilities attending postsecondary institutions are on the rise (Henderson, 1995) and with this trend the use of assistive technology (AT) for students with disabilities has steadily increased (Higgins & Zvi, 1995, Lance, 1996; Raskind, 1993). Legislation that spans the lives of persons with disabilities from birth through adulthood, has underscored the importance of technology for all individuals with disabilities to ensure their access to education. The 1997 reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA '97), now mandates the consideration of AT for all children, including those with mild to moderate disabilities, in their education programs. At the postsecondary level the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA, 1990) and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act (Section 504) continue to provide access to the general curriculum, for qualified persons with disabilities, through reasonable accommodations and service delivery that include AT (e.g., books on tape, voice recognition systems). The Technology Related Assistance Act of 1988 (Tech Act) applies to both public and private human service agencies to ensure technological access in work, school, and community settings for persons with disabilities. Together, this legislation, along with the movement to use technology to promote learning for all students, (Gomes, 2000; Orkwis & McLane, 1998; Rose, Stahl, & Sethuraman, 2000; Silver, Bourke, & Strehorn, 1998), has begun to influence service delivery of AT to a broader range of individuals with disabilities (Bryant, Rivera, & Warde, 1994; Day, 1995; Higgins & Raskind, 1995; Raskind & Higgins, 1998). The application of AT across the continuum of individuals with mild to severe disabilities marks a paradigm shift in how educators view AT, which previously had been viewed almost exclusively within a rehabilitative or remediative context (Warger, 1998), and for only persons with physical and sensory impairments (Bryant & Seay, 1998). This shift is beginning to appear in postsecondary settings. Lance (1996) found not only did postsecondary disability service providers (DSP) perceive their students with disabilities would benefit academically from the use of AT, but the students themselves expressed a need for AT training and greater accessibility to AT devices. Legislative Impact on Postsecondary Disability Service Providers The amendments to IDEA '97 now mandate that AT devices and services be considered in the family service plan or education program for all children from infant through twelfth grade, identified as having an exceptional educational need (i.e., who are receiving special education services) (IDEA Regulations, 1999). The Individual Education Program (IEP) team, those responsible for developing reasonable accommodations for elementary and secondary students with disabilities, must consider AT based on the individual's strengths and limitations in relation to educational access (Behrmann, 1994; Bragman, 1987). …


Between 15.4% and 51% of men who have sex with men (MSM) have experienced domestic violence (DV). The adverse health consequences of DV are well documented for women victims, but little is known about the association between DV and health outcomes for men who have sex with men. We aimed to establish if MSM exposed to DV had higher odds of experiencing adverse health outcomes or engaging in risk behaviours. In this systematic review and meta-analysis, we searched 13 electronic databases to identify primary research studies reporting the risk of adverse health outcomes or risk behaviours for MSM experiencing or perpetrating DV. Of 4,653 identified, 17 were included in the review, of which 15 were cross-sectional and 2 cohort. The 17 studies described 16 datasets with 12,778 participants, reporting 82 estimates. All studies were included in the meta-analysis. We found that exposure to DV increased the odds of substance use (1·68, 95% CI 1·44–1·92), being HIV positive (1·4, 95% CI 1·19–1·62) and depression (1·6, 95% CI 1·28–1·92). Pooled crude odds ratios of the risk of unprotected anal sex in MSM exposed to DV were (1·49, 95% CI 0·67–2·30) with high level of heterogeneity among estimates. We conclude that DV has adverse health consequences for MSM. Exposure to DV is a risk factor for substance use, depression and HIV status. The evidence for the association between DV and sexual risk behaviour such as unprotected anal sex is less robust. There is a lack of cohort studies which limits the possibility to establish the direction of these associations. Studies are absent from Europe and low and middle income countries.


The audio-visual character of television was used as the conceptual focus of this examination of television news broadcasting. The research comprised both a macro and micro level analysis.
On the macro level, a study was undertaken to examine the influences of the cultural context of broadcasting with special reference to the structure of television and its news organizations upon the formats and content of television news programmes. A comparative content analysis was carried out of the principle evening newscast during one fortnight of news broadcast by the public and the private broadcast networks, in Britain and Canada, and the NBC in the United States. A special "code" was developed for this purpose which would categorize not only content but also format, with a special emphasis on the relative role of the commentary and the visuals. Comparison between the countries revealed differences in both content and format, pointing to different cultural emphasis upon specific issues. Differences in the formats used in the news revealed a greater trend to entertainment values - particularly the use of the action visuals and the newsreader in the more commercialised cultural settings. Within Canada and Britain, those differences between the public and private sectors which did occur, had to do with the style of news presentation, not with its contents, pointing to the standardization of production within the news organization under the conditions of competition and inter-dependence inherent in the structure of broadcasting in these countries.
The micro level study examined the effects of the visual and auditory components of the news story by means of an experimental study. A BBC type newscast about demonstrations was systematically varied in six experimental conditions to examine the relative effects and their interactions of modality, consistency or inconsistency between the modalities and of content bias on retention and opinion change. Specifically designed verb/visual techniques of measuring the impression and the visual retention of the event were used. The results showed that viewers shifted their opinions in the direction of the story bias. Visual information increased the impact of the commentary and had its effects principally on the affective component of the opinion. Where visual information and commentary were at variance, the visuals had greater impact on the affective component, with the commentary influencing the cognitive or belief component more.
The research points to the need to extend the concept of bias beyond that traditionally used in communication research, not only beyond content to style of presentation, but also to an examination of the different cultural and organizational factors within the industry in which lead to variations in the emphasis upon the visual element within news programmes.


The use of multivariate discriminant analysis (MDA) and logistic regression procedure (Logit) in
predicting business failure has been explored in numerous studies since 1960s. Recently, a newly
developed technique, artificial neural networks (ANNs), has attracted much attention and has been
applied to bankruptcy prediction area. At the same time, many papers attempted to compare the
predictive ability of these two distinct classes of discriminators in order to find a best failure prediction
method. However, most of their results, despite showing the superiority of ANNs, have been sharply
criticised either for the unfair comparison or for their specific data selection. There is a need to
undertake theory-based research to identify problem characteristics that predict when ANNs will
forecast better than statistical models; to identify which input variable characteristics predict when
ANNs will improve model estimation; and to identify when this advantage would give substantially
improved forecasting performance.
Motivated by the limited amount of research on investigating the relative effectiveness of traditional
methods as compared to the ANNs under a wide variety of modelling assumptions, one of the objectives
of this study is to compare their classification capacities on a theoretical basis, and to evaluate the
robustness on certain situations through the simulation study. The investigation is conducted on two
popular statistical techniques—the MDA and the Logit, as well as two different learning algorithms of
ANNs—the standard generalised delta rule (GDR) and the Projection approach (Proj). This can be
regarded as the horizontal assessments of bankruptcy prediction.
The other aim of this thesis is to evaluate the impacts of variations in failure prediction models through
the empirical study. These variations involve the issues we often encounter in the real world, such as
the different sizes of sample, a choice-based sampling bias, the sensitivity of optimal cutoff points to
misclassification costs of Type I and Type II errors, and the imbalance of the composition of failed to
nonfailed firms between training and testing data sets. This can be viewed as the vertical assessments of
bankruptcy prediction.
The simulation results indicate that the neural networks are indeed competitive approaches on
bankruptcy prediction. In particular, the Projection network, which was developed to overcome the
drawbacks that a commonly used GDR backpropagation algorithm often experiences, proves its
remarkable superiority not only quantitatively (i.e., lower overall accuracy), but also qualitatively
(lower Type I and Type II errors). The Projection network holds a promise for future elaboration.
Moreover, the outcomes of empirical experiments enhance our knowledge of some factors in
constructing a failure forecasting model. This knowledge is related to both traditional statistical tools
and modem neural networks and is essential for decision making.


Abstract As part of an overall verification and validation effort, the Electric Power Research Institute's (EPRIs) CORETRAN-01 has been benchmarked against Northern States Power's Prairie Island and Monticello reactors through 12 cycles of operation. The two Prairie Island reactors are Westinghouse 2-loop units with 121 asymmetric 14 × 14 lattice assemblies utilizing up to 8 wt% gadolinium while Monticello is a General Electric 484 bundle boiling water reactor. All reactor cases were executed in full core utilizing 24 axial nodes per assembly in the fuel with 1 additional reflector node above, below, and around the perimeter of the core. Cross-section sets used in this benchmark effort were generated by EPRI's CPM-3 as well as Studsvik's CASMO-3 and CASMO-4 to allow for separation of the lattice calculation effect from the nodal simulation method. These cases exercised the depletion-shuffle-depletion sequence through four cycles for each unit using plant data to follow actual operations. Flux map calculations were performed for comparison to corresponding measurement statepoints. Additionally, start-up physics testing cases were used to predict cycle physics parameters for comparison to existing plant methods and measurements. These benchmark results agreed well with both current analysis methods and plant measurements, indicating that CORETRAN-01 may be appropriate for steady-state physics calculations of both the Prairie Island and Monticello reactors. However, only the Prairie Island results are discussed in this paper since Monticello results were of similar quality and agreement. No attempt was made in this work to investigate CORETRAN-01 kinetics capability by analyzing plant transients, but these steady-state results form a good foundation for moving in that direction.


1. This paper describes a lateral swaying movement performed by desert locust nymphs. This movement is called 'peering'. 2. The angle through which the body moves is influenced by the position of objects in the visual field, showing that the movement is related to vision. 3. When given a choice of two objects at different distances the nymphs show a preference for the nearer one. The estimation of the relative distances of the two objects is not achieved by a binocular method nor is it based on the angle subtended by the objects. 4. An experiment is described in which an object is moved while the insect is peering. If the object is moved in the opposite direction to the insect9s motion the insect jumps short of the object. This seems to support the hypothesis that one of the functions of peering is to estimate distance by the extent of the movement over the retina of an object9s image. 5. This method of distance estimation is discussed with relation to the binocular method. 6. It is suggested that in some cases the peering observed may represent a preliminary scanning of the visual field and may provide information about the finer details of the field.


Both continuously tapered and discrete multilevel subwavelength grating structures are examined to determine the optimum method of designing antireflection surfaces. Continuously tapered gratings are designed with use of the optimal Klopfenstein graded index technique, while discrete multilevel stair-step gratings are designed with use of the Tschebyscheff quarter-wave synthesis technique. It is shown that a continuous design is always deeper than a discrete design. It is determined that since a subwavelength grating structure produces a bandpass surface, the high-pass (short-wave) performance of the continuous taper design cannot be realized. Therefore the discrete method of designing antireflection subwavelength gratings will always produce a shallower spatial profile or a smaller aspect ratio for any specified maximum reflection threshold level over a given passband.


Aquaporins and aquaglyceroporins are membrane channels that allow the permeation of water and certain other small solutes across the cell membrane, or in the case of AQP6, AQP11 and AQP12A, intracellular membranes, such as vesicles and the endoplasmic reticulum membrane [16]. Since the isolation and cloning of the first aquaporin (AQP1) [20], 12 additional mammalian members of the family have been identified, although little is known about the functional properties of one of these (AQP12A; Q8IXF9) and it is thus not tabulated. The other 12 aquaporins can be broadly divided into three families: orthodox aquaporins (AQP0,-1,-2,-4,-5, -6 and -8) permeable mainly to water, but for some additional solutes [4]; aquaglyceroporins (AQP3,-7 -9 and -10), additionally permeable to glycerol and for some isoforms urea [14], and superaquaporins (AQP11 and 12) located within cells [12]. Some aquaporins also conduct ammonia and/or H2O2 giving rise to the terms 'ammoniaporins' ('aquaammoniaporins') and 'peroxiporins', respectively. Aquaporins are impermeable to protons and other inorganic and organic cations, with the possible exception of AQP1, although this is controversial [14]. One or more members of this family of proteins have been found to be expressed in almost all tissues of the body [reviewed in Yang (2017) [26]]. AQPs are involved in numerous processes that include systemic water homeostasis, adipocyte metabolism, brain oedema, cell migration and fluid secretion by epithelia. Loss of function mutations of some human AQPs, or their disruption by autoantibodies further underscore their importance [reviewed by Verkman et al. (2014) [23], Kitchen et al. (2105) [14]]. Functional AQPs exist as homotetramers that are the water conducting units wherein individual AQP subunits (each a protomer) have six TM helices and two half helices that constitute a seventh 'pseudotransmembrane domain' that surrounds a narrow water conducting channel [16]. In addition to the four pores contributed by the protomers, an additional hydrophobic pore exists within the center of the complex [16] that may mediate the transport through AQP1. Although numerous small molecule inhibitors of aquaporins, particularly APQ1, have been reported primarily from Xenopus oocyte swelling assays, the activity of most has subsequently been disputed upon retesting using assays of water transport that are less prone to various artifacts [5] and they are therefore excluded from the tables [see Tradtrantip et al. (2017) [22] for a review].


This paper of female entrepreneurship has been inspired by gender equality issues. Today research and policy have been more and more fuelled by the idea that female entrepreneurs are important for economic progress. Female entrepreneurs were assumed to experience gender-related discrimination and to experience more difficulties when starting up and running a business than their male counterparts. Even when issues such as barriers and obstacles to female entrepreneurs are raised in the gender and entrepreneurship debate, this is usually done from the perspective that female entrepreneurs are an untapped resource and have potential to contribute to a country's economic performance. Indeed, although gender equality is one of the arguments underlying the support for female entrepreneurs within the European Union, the argument that female entrepreneurs (have the potential to)contribute to economic performance continues to play a role here. The global growth of female entrepreneurship in the last decades has been accompanied by an increase in the number of studies on female entrepreneurship.


This paper examines the movement of trade cards in 18th-century consumer and collecting cultures. These unique graphic advertisements supported socio-economic relationships for a limited period in the history of consumption and became sought-after graphic commodities. I consider the ways in which trade cards traversed public commercial centres and private domestic spaces as mobile advertisements, personalized bills, and miniature artworks accruing new meanings and uses as they passed through space and time. The paper complicates the traditional categorization of trade cards as "ephemera." It suggests that trade cards, rather than functioning as throwaway fragments of promotional culture, circulated within commercial society and collecting circles as valued tokens of private economic exchanges and rarefied objects.


New mapping, structural analysis, and biostratigraphy of the late Paleozoic "Antler overlap sequence" at Edna Mountain, Nevada, document several distinct deformational events between the Devonian–Mississippian Antler orogeny and the Permo-Triassic Sonoma orogeny. Twofold sets (F 1 , mid-Pennsylvanian, and F 3 , mid-Permian) and the Iron Point fault are late Paleozoic. These record both shortening and extension in late Paleozoic time, and provide further evidence that western North America was not relatively quiescent between the Antler and Sonoma orogenies. These structures are overprinted by folding thought to be associated with emplacement of the Golconda allochthon (F 4 ), indicating that the rocks at Edna Mountain were in approximately their present location and orientation by that time. Unconformities within the "Antler overlap" section record periods of uplift and erosion related to late Paleozoic tectonism. They are recognized based on angular truncations of the underlying units, basal conglomerates containing fragments of the underlying units, and local erosional features including channels and karst. Biostratigraphic age control makes it possible to bracket the ages of the unconformities, and to correlate some of them with known regional unconformities. The detailed deformation record at Edna Mountain demonstrates the strength of combined biostratigraphic, stratigraphic, and structural analysis of the "Antler overlap assemblage" for deciphering previously unrecognized late Paleozoic deformation. The Iron Point fault is a mid-Pennsylvanian, down-to-the-east, low-angle normal fault. Previously mapped as the Iron Point "thrust" (Erickson and Marsh, 1974a, 1974b, 1974c), this fault places younger rocks over older, truncates folds in both hanging wall and footwall, and cuts downsection to the east in the hanging wall. Reconstruction of the original fault orientation by removing younger deformation events results in a gently east- or northeast-dipping surface. Motion along the Iron Point fault may have been a response to crustal thickening during the development of west-southwest–verging F 1 folds, the most penetrative deformation at Edna Mountain. To our knowledge, the Iron Point fault is kinematically unique for this region and time period. Its presence suggests that the rocks at Edna Mountain were near the locus of mid-Pennsylvanian deformation and that this deformation was probably related to events at the western boundary of the continent.


A new shape for the world auto industry emerges from this far-ranging study, which reveals a path of development quite different from those widely forecast and leaves no doubt that the changes ahead will be dramatic.Cited by Business Week as one of 1984's ten best books on business and economics, The Future of the Automobile is the most comprehensive assessment ever conducted of the world's largest industry. It is a collaborative study by leading researchers and industry experts in Japan, Germany, France, Italy, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States that covers the industry at the firm level and at the global level. It projects the composition of the industry 20 years hence, estimates long-term demand for the product, focuses on the growing cooperation between producers on individual models even as overall competition in the industry intensifies, and reveals alternative paths for industrial relations.Alan Altshuler is Dean of the Graduate School of Public Administration at New York University. Daniel Roos is Director of the Center for Transportation Studies and Professor of Civil Engineering at MIT where Martin Anderson and James Womack also teach. Daniel Jones teaches at the University of Sussex.


This paper aims to test for structural breaks and dynamic changes in emerging market volatility. We typically relate these issues to stock market liberalization since the latter is often considered as one of the most important forces that promote economic growth and rapid maturation of the emerging markets of the world. Using a bivariate GARCH-M model, stability tests in a linear framework and a pooled time-series cross-section model, we show that structural breaks detected in emerging market volatility series do not happen together with official liberalization dates, but they rather coincide with dates of the first ADR/Country Fund introduction and with dates of large increases in the US capital flows. Consistently, the pooled estimation results indicate that liberalization methods other than liberalization via a formal policy decree are the ones that significantly affect volatility.


Today's most revered, feared, and controversial Chinese novelist offers a tour de force in which the real, the absurd, the comical, and the tragic are blended into a fascinating read. The hero-or antihero-of Mo Yan's novel is Ximen Nao, a landowner known for his generosity and kindness and benevolence to his peasants. However, during Mao's Land Reform Movement of 1948, he is not only stripped of his land and worldly possessions but cruelly executed, despite his protestations of innocence. The novel opens in Hell, where Lord Yama, king of the underworld, has Ximen Nao tortured endlessly in order to force a confession of guilt from him. When his efforts remain fruitless, Lord Yama allows Ximen Nao to return to earth, where he is reborn not as a human, but first as a donkey, then a horse, a pig, a monkey, and, finally, the big-headed boy Lan Qiansui. Through the eyes of animal and boy, Ximen Nao takes us on a deliriously unique journey through fifty years of peasant history in China, right to the edge of the new millennium. Here is an absolutely riveting tale that reveals the author's love of a homeland beset by ills inevitable, political, and traditional.


Long-term slip rates for the Denali Fault in southern Alaska are derived using ^(10)Be cosmogenic radionuclide (CRN) dating of offset glacial moraines at two sites. Correction of ^(10)Be CRN model ages for the effect of snow shielding uses historical, regional snow cover data scaled to the site altitudes. To integrate the time variation of snow cover, we included the relative changes in effective wetness over the last 11 ka, derived from lake-level records and δ^(18)O variations from Alaskan lakes. The moraine CRN model ages are normally distributed around an average of 12.1 ± 1.0 ka (n = 22, ± 1σ). The slip rate decreases westward from ~13 mm/a at 144°49′W to about 7 mm/a at 149°26′W. The data are consistent with a kinematic model in which southern Alaska translates northwestward at a rate of ~14 mm/a relative to a stable northern Alaska with no rotation. This suggests progressive slip partitioning between the Denali Fault and the active fold and thrust belt at the northern front of the Alaska range, with convergence rates increasing westward from ~4 mm/a to 11 mm/a between ~149°W and 145°W. As the two moraines sampled for this study were emplaced synchronously, our suggestion of a westward decrease in the slip rate of the Denali Fault relies largely upon the measured offsets at both sites, regardless of any potential systematic uncertainty in the CRN model ages.


Parents of children with cancer or a chronic illness not only face practical challenges in the management of their child's condition, but also experience intense psychological and existential distress in the period after diagnosis that can have detrimental effects in the long run if left undetected. To date, neither the option of using an ultra-short screening tool for measuring parents' distress, nor a meaning-based intervention to reduce parents' distress, have been investigated. The current research comprised two studies. Study 1 aimed to evaluate the accuracy of an adaptation of Mitchell et al.'s (2010) Emotional and Help Thermometers in detecting the level of distress. Mitchell et al.'s instrument consisted of four emotion thermometers – Distress, Anxiety, Depression, Anger – and a Need Help thermometer. Our adaptation added the "Crushed Universe" thermometer designed to measure existential distress. All six thermometers were compared against a battery of assessment tools that measure depression, anxiety (Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale-21 items), loss of meaning (Sense of Coherence-13 items), and post-traumatic stress (Impact of Events Scale-Revised). Participants were main caregivers whose children were diagnosed with cancer or chronic illness (n = 172). The thermometers had good diagnostic accuracy in predicting various forms of distress, and the Crushed Universe Thermometer was able to predict parents' sense of meaningfulness and post-traumatic stress symptoms. The Crushed Universe Thermometer was also the optimal thermometer in predicting depression, anxiety, and stress. Study 2 aimed to evaluate the applicability and efficacy of a meaning-based intervention in reducing parents' distress in relation to the context, particularly meaning-related distress. Participants were two mothers, one with a child with cancer, the other with a chronic illness. In both cases, contextual stressors influenced participants' distress more than the child's illness. Together, the results suggest that existential distress is a significant component of psychological distress for parents of chronically-ill children.


"What doesn't exist is an image of the diverse forms of personal womanhood that were caught up by the movement and supported it, an image not of the programs, organizations, work, and achievements, but rather of the characteristic vital impulse from which everything emerged…"
Ute Gerhard

The Feminist Historiography program is based on an ongoing research project by Azadeh Fatehrad at the Royal College of Art in London. In her project, Fatehrad brings together a number of different methods, including analysing archival still and moving images, conducting field-work, and running public programmes of screenings, seminars and workshops, to explore her research further. The Feminist Historiography program reflects on three elements, such as the feminist movement in everyday life, the importance of community practice in this context and also the use of archival photographs in articulating the feminist history. The program is comprised of a seminar, performance and screening session.
More particularly, The Feminist Historiography program focuses on a new stage in Fatehrad's research by looking at different understandings of the political as well as the personal; women's personal relations with others, the way they see themselves, their social and intellectual network, and the culture surrounding the feminist movement.

The seminar elaborates on the above context by looking at Sisters of Jam project Kate Millett's Farm reflecting on community practice, Athena Farrokhzad's poem on politics of the domestic, and Petra Bauer's project investigating the politics of representation through archival photographs. The seminar will finish with a performance piece by Azadeh Fatehrad.

The Feminist Historiography program aims to bring together these different perspectives to create a kind of mind map to act as a platform from which further discussion can take place.


Uranium Fixation and Removal from Different Soil Types: Review
Environmental contamination caused by radionuclides, in particular by uranium and its decay products is a serious problem worldwide. The development of nuclear science and technology has led to increasing nuclear waste containing uranium being released and disposed in the environment. The objective of this paper is to develop a better understanding of factors affecting uranium fixation and removal from different soils with different soil characteristics. Soils contaminated with uranium at concentrations above regulatory limits pose an environmental and human health risk. Investigations about uranium content and fate in soils revealed several finding depending on soil factors, radionuclide source and nature, and existing vegetation in the area. In organic rich soils U seems to be more soluble and bioavailable. Data demonstrates the effectiveness of soil amendments (Hydroxyapatite, illite and zeolite) in reducing the mobility of U, which makes in-place immobilization an effective remediation alternative. In contrast to increase U solubility and leach-ability the maximum solubilization of U was observed with a combined soil acidification and citric acid addition, which may be necessary to maximize the phyto-extraction of U from soils with a pH >6.0.


The severity of illness was scored in a cohort of 11751 non-surgical patients presenting at the Emergency Department (ED) during 12 consecutive months and followed for 4.7 years. The scoring system Rapid Acute Physiology score (RAPS) (including blood pressure, respiratory rate, pulse rate and Glasgow coma scale) was calculated for all arrivals at the ED. The RAPS system was also additionally developed by including the peripheral oxygen saturation and patient age, resulting in the new Rapid Emergency Medicine Score, (REMS). REMS was superior to RAPS in predicting in-hospital mortality according to ROC-curve analysis. An increase of one point in the 26 point REMS scale was associated with an Odds ratio of 1.40 for in-hospital death (95% CI 1.36-1.45, p<0.0001). Similar results were obtained in the major patient groups (chest pain, stroke, coma, dyspnea and diabetes). The association between REMS and length of stay in hospital was modest. Charlson Co-morbidity Index could add prognostic information to REMS in a long-term (4.7 years), but not in a short-term perspective (3 and 7 days). REMS was shown to be as powerful a predictor of in-hospital mortality as the more complicated APACHE II. REMS at the ED could also predict long-term mortality (4.7 years) in the total cohort (Hazard ratio 1.26, p<0.0001).REMS is a potentially useful prognostic tool for non-surgical patients at the ED, regarding both in-hospital and long-term mortality. It is less complicated to use than APACHE II and has equal predictive accuracy.


Most modern multiprocessors offer weak memory behavior to improve their performance in terms of throughput. They allow the order of memory operations to be observed differently by each processor. This is opposite to the concept of sequential consistency (SC) which enforces a unique sequential view on all operations for all processors. Because most software has been and still is developed with SC in mind, we face a gap between the expected behavior and the actual behavior on modern architectures. The issues described only affect multithreaded software and therefore most programmers might never face them. However, multi-threaded bare metal software like operating systems, embedded software, and real-time software have to consider memory consistency and ensure that the order of memory operations does not yield unexpected results. This software is more critical as general consumer software in terms of consequences, and therefore new methods are needed to ensure their correct behavior.

In general, a memory system is considered weak if it allows behavior that is not possible in a sequential system. For example, in the SPARC processor with total store ordering (TSO) consistency, all writes might be delayed by store buffers before they eventually are processed by the main memory. This allows the issuing process to work with its own written values before other processes observed them (i.e., reading its own value before it leaves the store buffer). Because this behavior is not possible with sequential consistency, TSO is considered to be weaker than SC. Programming in the context of weak memory architectures requires a proper comprehension of how the model deviates from expected sequential behavior. For verification of these programs formal representations are required that cover the weak behavior in order to utilize formal verification tools.

This thesis explores different verification approaches and respectively fitting representations of a multitude of memory models. In a joint effort, we started with the concept of testing memory operation traces in regard of their consistency with different memory consistency models. A memory operation trace is directly derived from a program trace and consists of a sequence of read and write operations for each process. Analyzing the testing problem, we are able to prove that the problem is NP-complete for most memory models. In that process, a satisfiability (SAT) encoding for given problem instances was developed, that can be used in reachability and robustness analysis.

In order to cover all program executions instead of just a single program trace, additional representations are introduced and explored throughout this thesis. One of the representations introduced is a novel approach to specify a weak memory system using temporal logics. A set of linear temporal logic (LTL) formulas is developed that describes all properties required to restrict possible traces to those consistent to the given memory model. The resulting LTL specifications can directly be used in model checking, e.g., to check safety conditions. Unfortunately, the derived LTL specifications suffer from the state explosion problem: Even small examples, like the Peterson mutual exclusion algorithm, tend to generate huge formulas and require vast amounts of memory for verification. For this reason, it is concluded that using the proposed verification approach these specifications are not well suited for verification of real world software. Nonetheless, they provide comprehensive and formally correct descriptions that might be used elsewhere, e.g., programming or teaching.

Another approach to represent these models are operational semantics. In this thesis, operational semantics of weak memory models are provided in the form of reference machines that are both correct and complete regarding the memory model specification. Operational semantics allow to simulate systems with weak memory models step by step. This provides an elegant way to study the effects that lead to weak consistent behavior, while still providing a basis for formal verification. The operational models are then incorporated in verification tools for multithreaded software. These state space exploration tools proved suitable for verification of multithreaded software in a weak consistent memory environment. However, because not only the memory system but also the processor are expressed as operational semantics, some verification approach will not be feasible due to the large size of the state space.

Finally, to tackle the beforementioned issue, a state transition system for parallel programs is proposed. The transition system is defined by a set of structural operational semantics (SOS) rules and a suitable memory structure that can cover multiple memory models. This allows to influence the state space by use of smart representations and approximation approaches in future work.


We study revenue optimization pricing algorithms for repeated posted-price auctions where a seller interacts with a single strategic buyer that holds a fixed private valuation. When the participants non-equally discount their cumulative utilities, we show that the optimal constant pricing (which offers the Myerson price) is no longer optimal. In the case of more patient seller, we propose a novel multidimensional optimization functional --- a generalization of the one used to determine Myerson's price. This functional allows to find the optimal algorithm and to boost revenue of the optimal static pricing by an efficient low-dimensional approximation. Numerical experiments are provided to support our results.


Governments in developing countries are increasingly making efforts to provide more access to information and services for citizens, businesses, and civil servants through smart devices. However, providing strategically high impact m-services is facing numerous challenges, such as complexity of different mobile technologies, creating secured networks to deliver reliable service, and identifying the types of services that can be easily provided on mobile devices. Those problems could be solved by applying cloud computing model to the business process of E-government to build a government cloud. This research, proposes an environment for citizens to have greater access to their government and, in theory, makes citizen-to-government contact more inclusive. In addition, it examines an application that allows anyone to report and track non-emergency issues via the internet. It can also encourage citizens to become active in improving and taking care of their community by reporting issues in their neighborhood in order to improve the Egyptian e-government development index.


Typically, Markov decision problems (MDPs) assume a single action is executed per decision epoch, but in the real world one may frequently execute certain actions in parallel. This paper explores concurrent MDPs, MDPs which allow multiple non-conflicting actions to be executed simultaneously, and presents two new algorithms. Our first approach exploits two provably sound pruning rules, and thus guarantees solution optimality. Our second technique is a fast, sampling-based algorithm, which produces c1ose-to-optimal solutions extremely quickly. Experiments show that our approaches outperform the existing algorithms producing up to two orders of magnitude speedup.


In many industrial processes granular materials are mixed together in partially filled slowly rotating drums. In this paper a general theoretical framework is developed for the quasi-two-dimensional motion of granular material in a rotating drum. The key assumption is that the body can be divided into a fluid-like and a solid-like region, that are separated by a non-material singular surface at which discontinuities occur. Experiments show that close to the free surface there is a thin rapidly moving fluid-like avalanche that flows downslope, and beneath it there is a large region of slowly rotating solid-like material. The solid region provides a net transport of material upslope and there is strong mass transfer between the two regions. In the theory the avalanche is treated as a shallow incompressible Mohr–Coulomb or inviscid material sliding on a moving bed at which there is erosion and deposition. The solid is treated as a rigid rotating body, and the two regions are coupled together using a mass jump condition. The theory has the potential to model time-dependent intermittent flow with shock waves, as well as steady-state continuous flow. An exact solution for the case of steady continuous flow is presented. This demonstrates that when the base of the avalanche lies above the axis of revolution a solid core develops in the centre of the drum. Experiments are presented to show how a mono-disperse granular material mixes in the drum, and the results are compared with the predictions using the exact solution.


Datura wrightii (Solanaceae), a common shrub in the southwestern United States, bears massive, white, night-blooming flowers that attract and reward hawkmoth pollinators. However, Apis mellifera (honeybee) foragers are often observed on its flowers, especially at dusk and dawn hours. Their foraging activities are focused on the anthers, suggesting they could be pollen thieves. We used a series of observations and manipulative experiments to determine if honeybees are detrimental or beneficial to D. wrightii. We found that honeybees were the most frequent visitors to D. wrightii flowers at both dusk and dawn, and that they removed and carried large amounts of D. wrightii pollen. Flowers were capable of being pollinated at dusk and dawn and a single visit by a honeybee was sufficient to pollinate the flowers and produce fruit. There was no evidence that restricting visitation to diurnal hours yielded fruit set that was different from when we restricted visitation (likely by hawkmoths) to evening hours. These results suggest that honeybees are capable of effective pollination of D. wrightii. Although honeybees might interfere with pollen transmission mediated by their highly specialized hawkmoth pollinators, they may also increase plant fitness by pollinating D. wrightii when hawkmoths are not present.


This paper reviews the literature on declining business dynamism and its implications in the United States and proposes a unifying theory to analyze its symptoms and the potential causes. We first highlight 10 pronounced stylized facts in relation to declining business dynamism documented in the literature. We then describe a theoretical framework of endogenous markups, innovation, and competition that can potentially speak to all of these facts jointly. We explore theoretical predictions of this framework, which are jointly determined by two interacting forces: a composition effect that determines the market concentration and an incentive effect that determines how firms respond to a given concentration in the economy. The results highlight that a decline in knowledge diffusion between frontier and laggard firms could be a significant driver of empirical trends observed in the data. This study emphasizes the potential of growth theory for the analysis of factors behind declining business dynamism and the need for a deeper investigation in this direction.


Automatic art analysis aims to classify and retrieve artistic representations from a collection of images by using computer vision and machine learning techniques. In this work, we propose to enhance visual representations from neural networks with contextual artistic information. Whereas visual representations are able to capture information about the content and the style of an artwork, our proposed context-aware embeddings additionally encode relationships between different artistic attributes, such as author, school, or historical period. We design two different approaches for using context in automatic art analysis. In the first one, contextual data is obtained through a multi-task learning model, in which several attributes are trained together to find visual relationships between elements. In the second approach, context is obtained through an art-specific knowledge graph, which encodes relationships between artistic attributes. An exhaustive evaluation of both of our models in several art analysis problems, such as author identification, type classification, or cross-modal retrieval, show that performance is improved by up to 7.3% in art classification and 37.24% in retrieval when context-aware embeddings are used.


E-learning is becoming popular as it provides learners the flexibility, targeted resources across the internet, personalized guidance, and immediate feedback during learning. However, lack of social interaction, an indispensable component in developing some skills, has been a pain point in e-learning. We propose using Alexa, a voice-controlled Intelligent Personal Assistants (IPA), in e-learning to provide in-person practice to achieve some desired learning goals. With Alexa enabled learning experiences, learners are able to practice with other students (one role of Alexa) or receive immediate feedback from teachers (another role of Alexa) in an e-learning environment. We propose a configuration driven conversation engine, which can support instructional designers to create diverse in-person practice opportunities in e-learning. We demonstrate that learning designers can create an Alexa activity with a few configuration steps. We also share results on the effectiveness of an Alexa activity with formative assessment evaluation in real world applications.


Internet of Things can prove that technology has rapidly evolves. Nowadays, the usage of internet had been widely used around the world. However, as technology advanced the need for home security system using Internet of Things had becoming more crucial. However, current system used by the developers are merely too simple and focusing more on home automation system. Besides that, current home security system on the market was too expensive due to the complexity of the devices which sometimes used an expensive microcontroller or microprocessor. Therefore, a development of home security system using Internet of Things with online database server, FAVORIOT is needed. The devices will be equipped with Passive Infrared sensor and Infrared sensor. This sensors will monitor the presence of intruder and any unauthorized entry. The usage of Blynk application on this device as the main switch which can activate the device even the users are across the world. The data receive from the sensor then send to the microcontroller which has already equipped with internet module. The FAVORIOT platform will received data that can helps the user to monitor the house and sending a real-time alerts to the users. Therefore, a home security system based on Internet of Things can help the users to monitor the house even they are absent and FAVORIOT platform will help the user to receive alerts as soon as possible.


Cyber physical systems (CPSs) are software-intensive smart distributed systems that support physical components endowed with integrated computational capabilities. Tiered, often wireless, networks are typically used to collect or push the data generated or required by a distributed set of CPS-based devices. The edge-to-core traffic flows on the tiered networks can become overwhelming. Thus, appropriate traffic engineering (TE) algorithms are required to manage the flows, while at the same time meeting the delivery requirements in terms of latency, jitter, and packet loss. This chapter provides a basic overview of CPSs followed by a discussion of a newly developed TE method called 'constrained average', where traffic is by design allowed to be delayed up to a specified, but small value epsilon, but with zero packet loss.


As the possibility of safe escape is one of the most crucial aspects of a building's fire safety features, understanding of human behaviour under fire conditions is important for a successful evacuation. Although most of today's buildings are equipped with fire safety systems, a fire can still occur at anytime and anywhere in a building and have devastating consequences. In the last decade, researchers and practitioners have used information technology to assist with fire safety design and emergency management. Building Information Modelling (BIM) is an exemplar process whose underpinning digital technology has been helpful for fire safety design, simulation, and analysis, but there is a lack of research on how BIM-based models combined with agent-based simulations can help improve evacuation via effective navigation and wayfinding in high-rise residential buildings. Customising evacuation instructions based on BIM, simulation results and occupant location, and delivery of these bespoke instructions to occupants' smartphones during a fire emergency is relatively novel and research is needed to realise the potential of this approach. Therefore, this study investigates how customised evacuation instructions delivered to each occupant in a high-rise residential building could result in a faster evacuation during a fire incident. The research adopted a case study building and used Pathfinder (agent-based evacuation simulation software) to simulate evacuation from this eleven-floor high-rise residential building in Cairo, Egypt. Constraining evacuees (simulated agents in Pathfinder) to take particular exit routes was used as a proxy for delivering customised evacuation instructions to actual evacuees. Simulation results show that, in general, allowing the use of lifts for the benefit of disabled occupants could lead to their misuse by able-bodied occupants; evacuees would attempt to use the first visible point of exit regardless of how crowded it is. With optimally customised instructions, the evacuation time was, on average, 17.6 min (almost 50%) shorter than when the occupant's choice of egress route was simulated based on standard path planning factors such as route length, nearby crowds and visible hazards. With evacuation instructions sent via smartphones, occupants could exit more rapidly via alternative routes. Such bespoke instructions were shown to reduce the adverse effects of crowdedness and uneven distribution of occupants along vertical and horizontal evacuation routes on evacuation time.


This paper aims to improve predict ion capability of the vent sizing correlation p resented in the form of functional dependence of the dimensionless deflagration overpressure on the turbulent Bradley number similar to our prev ious studies . The correlation is essentially upgraded based on recent advancements in understanding and modelling of combustion phenomena relevant to hydrogen-air vented deflagrations and unique large-scale tests carried out by different research groups. The focus is on hydrogen-air deflagrations in low-strength equipment and buildings when the reduced pressure is accepted to be below 0.1 MPa. The combustion phenomena accounted for by the correlation include: turbulence generated by the flame front itself; leading point mechanis m stemming from the preferential diffusion of hydrogen in air in stretched flames; growth of the fractal area of the turbulent flame surface; initial turbulence in the flammable mixture; as well as effects of enclosure aspect ratio and presence of obstacles. The correlation is validated against the widest range of experimental conditions available to date (76 experimental points). The validation covers a wide range of test conditions: different shape enclosures of volume up to 120 m3; in itially quiescent and turbulent hydrogen-air mixtures; hydrogen concentration in air from 6% to 30% by volume; ignition source location at enclosure centre, near and far from a vent; empty enclosures and enclosures with obstacles .


The United States has faced stagnant postsecondary education degree completion rates for over a decade. When coupled with improved educational outcomes in other nations, the one-time world leader in higher education attainment has precipitously declined in standing internationally. Coupling this reality with the need for a more educated workforce domestically led President Barack Obama to proclaim improving higher education completion rates a national imperative in 2009. Despite input from the federal government, due to the decentralized nature of American postsecondary education, individual states maintain primary responsibility for governance and policy decisions. Consequently, there has been a range of state responses to improving college completion. Through a comparative case analysis, this study considers a putatively homogenous region to investigate state-level factors that "filtered" the national college completion agenda to distinct responses in Georgia, South Carolina, and Texas.


Summary

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 Understanding the spatial dynamics of insect distributions in farmland can provide insights into their ecological requirements and potential for management. Identifying the scale, location and persistence of species' aggregations is an important step towards understanding the factors driving population distributions. This study examined how different carabid species were distributed in field and field margin habitats, and analysed their spatiotemporal dynamics.

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 We sampled 156 locations in a grid of pitfall traps over approximately 1 ha, comprising a hedgerow and adjacent parts of two arable fields. Traps were monitored between June and November 1994 to provide data with high spatial and temporal resolution of the two-dimensional distributions of six carabid beetle taxa.

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 The pattern of carabid activity-density over the experimental site was displayed in a series of contour plots. Spatial analyses by distance indices (SADIE) were used to provide aggregation indices (Ia) for the distributions of carabid species at different times.

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A second SADIE index (Im) of spatial association between two sets of counts was used to measure the spatial stability of species' aggregation patterns through time. Im was also used to measure association or dissociation between the distributions of different species, and the spatial association between a species' distribution and an environmental variable.

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 Each taxon was aggregated most of the time, but different taxa aggregated in patches within the field and/or hedgerow to different and varying extents. The field boundaries were important for some species, either as the only habitat in which they occurred (Amara spp.), as the major focus of more widespread distribution (Harpalus rufipes), or as a seasonal refuge (Nebria brevicollis). Within the crop habitat, different species also occupied different areas, providing some evidence to suggest species packing in space.

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 Spatial distributions between consecutive samples were strongly and positively associated, indicating stability of patch location over short time-scales. The strength of the association in turn was correlated with activity-density. When time lags were introduced between sample distributions, some negative association indices indicated displacement of patches. In most cases, however, positive association was maintained over long periods, demonstrating patch stability.

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 The spatial stability of patches suggests that future studies should focus on the detailed measurement of biotic and abiotic factors associated with patch location. Identifying the underlying causes of population distributions in farmland has important implications for managing habitat to enhance populations of beneficial predators, and targeting insecticide applications in precision agriculture to minimize their adverse side-effects.


In 2007, a study of back-illuminated Charge-Coupled Devices (CCDs) for soft X-ray photon detection demonstrated the improvements that could be brought over more traditional micro-channel plate detectors for X-ray spectrometers based on diffraction gratings and position sensitive detectors. Whilst the spatial resolution was reported to be improved dramatically, an intrinsic limit of approximately 25 micrometers was found due to the spreading of the charge cloud generated in the CCD across several pixels. To overcome this resolution limit, it is necessary to move away from the current integrated imaging methods and consider a photon-counting approach, recording the photon interaction locations to the sub-pixel level. To make use of photon-counting techniques it is important that the individual events are separable. To maintain the throughput of the spectrometer for high intensity lines, higher frame rates and therefore higher readout speeds are required. With CCD based systems, the increased noise at high readout speeds can limit the photon-counting performance. The Electron-Multiplying CCD shares a similar architecture with the standard CCD but incorporates a "gain register". This novel addition allows controllable gain to be applied to the signal before the read noise is introduced, therefore allowing individual events to be resolved above the noise even at much higher readout rates. In the past, the EM-CCD has only been available with imaging areas too small to be practical in soft X-ray emission spectrometers. The current drive for large area Electron-Multiplying CCDs is opening this technology to new photon-counting applications, requiring in-depth analysis of the processes and techniques involved. Early results indicate that through the introduction of photon-counting techniques the resolution in such systems can be dramatically improved.


Mycorrhizal fungi are soil-borne organisms that form symbiotic associations with the majority of land plants. These fungi gather and exchange mineral nutrients with plants for photosynthetically derived carbohydrates. Mycorrhizal fungi can also confer other benefits onto plants, e.g. defense against pathogens, improved water relations, tolerance to heavy metal toxicity and herbivory. The influence of mycorrhizal fungi on plant mineral nutrition and response to stress suggests that these organisms may have a role to play sustainable agriculture as well as in bioremediation and ecosystem restoration. In contributing to this important research, I investigated host-specific interactions between mycorrhizal fungi and the sex morphs of the gynodioecious perennial herb Polemonium foliosissimum (Polemoniaceae) and their mycorrhizal associates in the field. I hypothesized that the genders of this species differed in their associations with mycorrhizal fungi in benefits received. I performed a full factorial simulated herbivory experiment and evaluated the extent of mycorrhizal colonization in the roots as well as the concentrations of nutrients in leaf tissue. Mycorrhizal colonization and leaf nutrient concentrations did not differ between the genders nor were influenced by the experimental treatments. This suggests that the genders of Polemonium foliosissimum do not interact differently with mycorrhizal fungi, and thus do not represent different "hosts". Also, I investigated local adaptation of mycorrhizal associations by exploring the effect of large herbivore grazing on plant-mycorrhizal associations. I hypothesized that grazing by large herbivores results in locally adapted symbioses that enhance plant response to herbivory. I grew the perennial bunchgrass Themeda triandra (Poaceae) in inoculum prepared from soils collected from three field exclosures with differing histories of large herbivore exclusion in the Kenya Long Term Exclosure Experiment. I conducted a full factorial simulated herbivory experiment in which plants were subject to two clipping events over the course of 5-months, and evaluated plant regrowth as well as mycorrhizal colonization for plants in the experiment. Plants grown in inoculum from exclosures in which large herbivores have had access produced more root mass when mycorrhizal fungi were present. Further, I found equivalent biomass production of clipped and non-clipped plants in inoculum prepared from the exclosure with only native large herbivore access while equivalent biomass production was not found in the substrate prepared from areas with a history of large herbivore exclusion. This suggests that mycorrhizal fungi mediate plant growth and response to herbivory in this system.


This paper studies the problem of feedback resource allocation in multiple-input-single-output (MISO) channels utilizing partial channel state information (CSI) feedback. Considering low/moderate signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs), the optimal quantizers and the feedback bit allocation maximizing the throughput are obtained in the asymptotic case where the number of feedback bits increases. Moreover, the results are utilized to derive the optimal retransmission rates in the automatic repeat request (ARQ) protocols and joint CSI-ARQ schemes are proposed for the MISO setups. We show that uniform channel amplitude quantization is asymptotically optimal in terms of throughput. Also, the optimal retransmission rates of the incremental redundancy (INR) ARQ protocols follow an arithmetic progression in the exponential domain. Under certain conditions, a MISO system using quantized CSI can be mapped to a MISO or a SISO (S: single) setup using ARQ or joint CSI-ARQ feedback in the sense that they lead to the same throughput. Finally, to maximize the throughput, the optimal number of channel direction quantization bits should be (M-1) times the number of amplitude quantization bits, where M is the number of transmit antennas.


Many crop insurance studies have pointed out that considering spatial yield similarity can help provide more precise premium rating. We use Bayesian Kriging for spatial smoothing to consider such similarity when estimating crop yield densities. This article's innovation is that the spatial smoothing is based on climate space, which is composed of climatological measures. We compare the climate space smoothing with a general physical space (longitudelatitude space) smoothing. The test results are favorable to the proposed climate smoothing method. The climate smoothing performs particularly well in states that have many missing counties and varied climate due to varying topography.


Magnesium phosphates such as struvite (MgNH4PO4x6H2O) can be recovered from municipal, industrial and agricultural wastewaters. However, minimal research has been conducted on the beneficial reuse of these recovered products; conducted research has focused on low pH soils. This study determined whether recovered struvite and dittmarite (MgNH4PO4xH2O) were effective P fertilizers in alkaline soils. In addition to commercially available triple superphosphate (TSP) and certified organic rock phosphate (RP), recovered struvite, dittmarite, and a heterogeneous recovered phosphate were evaluated in a laboratory dissolution study and as fertilizers for spring wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) in a greenhouse study. Struvite and dittmarite were much more soluble than RP, but less soluble than TSP. Laboratory dissolution kinetics were fast, with most materials nearing equilibrium within 24 hours. At a soil pH of 6.5, both dittmarite and struvite increased the average plant P concentration over the control. Struvite and dittmarite performance was similar to TSP. There were no significant differences in plant dry matter (DM) production or total P uptake at pH 6.5. In the limed soil (pH 7.6), many treatments had plant P concentrations significantly lower than the control, but most fertilizers increased DM production over the control; all fertilizers generally performed similarly to one another. These findings support previous work showing recovered Mg phosphates to be effective in acidic soils, and provide evidence that they are also effective in alkaline soils. Recovered Mg phosphates could become a useful alternative for P fertilization in arid and semi-arid environments.


The intrinsic alignment (IA) of galaxies has been shown to be a significant barrier to precision cosmic shear measurements. (Zhang, 2010, ApJ, 720, 1090) proposed a self-calibration technique for the power spectrum to calculate the induced gravitational shear-galaxy intrinsic ellipticity correlation (GI) in weak lensing surveys with photo-z measurements which is expected to reduce the IA contamination by at least a factor of 10 for currently proposed surveys. We confirm this using an independent analysis and propose an expansion to the self-calibration technique for the bispectrum in order to calculate the dominant IA gravitational shear-gravitational shear-intrinsic ellipticity correlation (GGI) contamination. We first establish an estimator to extract the galaxy density-density-intrinsic ellipticity (ggI) correlation from the galaxy ellipticity-density-density measurement for a photo-z galaxy sample. We then develop a relation between the GGI and ggI bispectra, which allows for the estimation and removal of the GGI correlation from the cosmic shear signal. We explore the performance of these two methods, compare to other possible sources of error, and show that the GGI self-calibration technique can potentially reduce the IA contamination by up to a factor of 5-10 for all but a few bin choices, thus reducing the contamination to the percent level. The self-calibration is less accurate for adjacent bins, but still allows for a factor of three reduction in the IA contamination. The self-calibration thus promises to be an efficient technique to isolate both the 2-point and 3-point intrinsic alignment signals from weak lensing measurements.


The possibility is considered that Australian film-maker Rolf de Heer has followed Epsilon (1995) with another filmic eco-warning, Dr. Plonk (2007), in which, as Mark J. Lacy despairs, heroic "dynamic individuals" unhelpfully "reinforce a (neo)liberal imaginary" (2001: 636), thus obliging Judith Hess Wright's allegation that genre films maintain the social status quo by offering "absurd solutions to economic and social conflicts" (2003: 42). But rather than 'shouting' the message that a messianic hero-figure can save the world as in his first eco-politically correct film, it is argued that de Heer has subsequently made a silent film in which the saviour fails: the eponymous Dr. Plonk is imprisoned and makes a subtle, unspoken plea to the audience to get out from in front of their television sets and save the world from ecological apocalypse themselves. De Heer has expressed considerable disdain towards television but this paper suggests that to maximise reception of their eco-warnings the eco-conscious film-maker needs to recognise the potential of interactive television and other new media technologies to increase voter turnout and to effect the aversion of global apocalypse through audiences taking individual responsibility.


We empirically examine two competing claims: first, if a firm's Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activity is driven by its CEO's private rent extraction (i.e. an agency problem), firms with higher CSR ratings are poorly governed and their managers are less likely to be dismissed for poor financial performance. In contrast, if CSR reflects owners' preferences, CEOs of firms with higher CSR ratings are more likely to be removed in light of poor financial performance. We find that CEO turnover-financial performance sensitivity increases in firm CSR scores during the last years of both the outgoing CEO as well as his predecessor. Further, firm CSR ratings do not change following CEO turnover suggesting that CSR ratings are a firm characteristic. Our findings are consistent with the view that CSR is driven by shareholder preferences.


This article analyzes legal controls on evidence destruction in more or less six parts. Part I describes the rich variety of authority to control evidence destruction. In civil cases, the spoliation inference, discovery sanctions, tort liability, and criminal obstruction of justice statutes provide sanctions against destruction of evidence. In criminal cases, defendants face fines and imprisonment from federal and state evidence destruction and contempt statutes. Also in criminal cases, prosecutors who destroy exculpatory 1086 evidence risk dismissal of indictments under the process clause, the Jencks Act, Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 16, and court's supervisory power. In addition, attorneys may breach professional standards if they participate in destruction of evidence or advise their clients to do so. Part II discusses policy considerations weighing for and against control of evidence desctruction. It concludes that strict controls being developed by many courts are justified. In particular, truth and fairness to litigants support restrictions on evidence destruction even though the inefficiency of wide-ranging document preservation and concern for individual rights and privacy suggest boundaries beyond which destruction of evidence should not be controlled. Parts III and IV develop the attainable objectives for legal controls on evidence destruction. Part III assumes that the legal system seeks only to restore the accuracy of individual legal proceedings. It points out the difficulty of decisionmaking under uncertainty and examines the conceptions of truth which underlie judicial thinking about destruction of evidence. Part IV explains that legal controls on evidence destruction not only can restore accuracy but can compensate victims and punish evidence destruction. Examples from spoliation doctrine, civil discovery sanctions, and prosecutorial destruction of evidence illustrate the differing results to which the functions of accuracy, compensation, and punishment can lead. Parts V and VI integrate doctrines and functions. Part V reviews routine document destruction programs and concludes that they should not insulate spoliators from legal controls otherwise applicable to destruction of evidence. Part VI argues that the doctrinal isolationism characterizing development of evidence destruction doctrines in the past should end and that courts should begin the reasoned elaboration of a coherent legal approach to destruction of evidence.


Possible systematic variations in earthquake occurrence and fluctuations in seismicity behaviourof two seismically active regions in Greece which share common seismotectonic properties, is the aim of this study. Mygdonia graben in northern Greeceis characterized by arather moderate background seismicity, with small earthquakes between 2008-2012 whereas Corinth Gulf in southern Greece exhibits a constantly high seismicity rate with several seismic activations during the recent instrumental period or before. The statistical approach of seismicity was accomplished, regardingthe magnitude, the inter-event time and distance for recent seismicity as a tool to quantify complex earthquake occurrence ordense spatial and temporal clustering. For this reason, complete catalogues were compiled for the time period of the study. Probabilistic tests such as the smoothed bootstrap test for modality and bump–hunt were employed in order to unveil the complexity of the probability density function distribution of the above parameters. On the other hand spatial earthquake distribution wasalso investigated under the frameof their fractal properties since the fractal coefficientcan largely express the clustering degree of seismicity. The goal of this stochasticanalysisis the quantification of the differentiationin seismicity propertiesinthese two important seismogenic normal fault populations in the back arc Aegean area.


Spatial heterogeneous slip dislocation models from seismic waveform inversions of several moderate to large earthquakes in the past decade in the Taiwan area are used to calculate stress transfer conditions associated with aftershock distributions. Regardless of the possibility of aftershocks along different fault planes to the mainshock, stress change calculations for optimum orientation planes after the mainshock show a great degree of consistency in positive stress change to aftershock distribution. Toward the possibility of forecasting aftershock distributions from stress changes due to the mainshock, we considered homogeneous fault models on the basis of earthquake scaling law to produce rapid stress change calculations. Stress changes from homogeneous and heterogeneous fault models show similar patterns. They both show good correlation with aftershock distributions, even for the complex fault rupture of the 1999 Chi-Chi, Taiwan, earthquake. Our results, thus, support the possibility of forecasting aftershock distributions using mainshock stress changes. Once the location, magnitude and focal mechanism of an earthquake become available, stress change calculations can be carried out to forecast aftershock distribution for earthquake hazard mitigation.


Human beings spend a great deal of time working to towards provision of their basic needs. Provision of such basic needs is particularly important not only to adults but also to pre-school children. Available literature shows that in Kenya enrolment of children in pre-school is low. It was believed that failure to adequately meet basic needs such as food, household size, and health status might have led to the children"s low enrolment in pre-school education and other levels of education in Miriga Mieru West Division of Imenti North District. It was for this reason this study was designed; to establish and document factors related to this low enrolment especially in Imenti North District where 52% of pre-school children do not attend pre-school and in particular 64% in Miriga Mieru West Division of the District. The main objective of this study was to establish the relationship between provision of children"s basic needs and enrolment in pre-school. The study used a correlation design employing a survey method, since the target population was large. The independent variables included food, household size, and health status. The dependent variable was children"s enrolment in pre-school. The target population for this study comprised 78, 201 children of pre-school age going from whom an actual sample size of 390 children was selected and their parents participated in the study. Children"s households were systematically sampled whereas Imenti North District was sampled purposively. Miriga Mieru West Division was selected due to its high population of pre-school age children (78,201) in comparison to other divisions in the district such as; Miriga Mieru East with 64,117, Timau with 55,292 and Buuri with 45,610 as well as its low pre-school enrolment rates (64%). The study used a questionnaire for parents and anthropometric tools for data collection. During pilot study, a test-retest was done to refine the instrument and determine its reliability. Cronbach"s alpha correlation was used to compute the correlation coefficient; the Alpha Coefficients of the instrument were 0.88 and 0.98 starting with the lowest going to the highest. The researcher administered the questionnaire to parents of pre-school children both with children not attending and children attending pre-school. Collected data were analyzed using quantitative methods. Data derived from the open-ended questions were analyzed using descriptive statistics such as percentages, means and standard deviations whereas the t-test (two tailed) for testing equality of means for independent samples was used to test H01, H02 and H04 while Pearson Chi-square( 2 ) for testing the relationship between variables was used to test H03. So as to establish the relationship between variables at 0.05 significant level. A t-test (two tailed) for independent samples found no relationship between household size, health status and enrolment in pre-school. But it established a relationship between the number of meals consumed in a day and enrolment in preschool. The results of the Pearson Chi-square ( 2 ) test showed that there is a relationship between nutritional status in terms of wasting, stunting and enrolment in pre-school. It also showed that there is no relationship between nutritional status in terms of underweight and enrolment in pre-school. The study recommends that the government needs to subsidize pre-school education costs so that more children can enroll in preschools. This study concludes that basic needs are important and unless they are met we will continue to have large numbers of children not attending pre-school continuing to increase.


A cross-sectional study of patients living with HIV/ AIDS treated during 2003 to 2007 in decentralized, rural health centers in Zambia was performed to measure virological outcomes after 12 months of antiretroviral therapy and identify factors associated with virological failure. Data from 228 patients who started antiretroviral therapy >12 months prior were analyzed. In all, 93% received stavudine + lamivudine + nevirapine regimens, and median antiretroviral therapy duration was 23.5 months (interquartile range 20-28). Of the 205 patients tested for viral load, 177 (86%) had viral load <1000 copies/mL. Probability of developing virological failure (viral load >1000 copies/mL) was 8.9% at 24 months and 19.6% at 32 months. Predictors for virological failure were <100% adherence, body mass index <18.5 kg/m2, and women <40 years old. Of those with virological failure who underwent 3 to 6 months of intensive adherence counseling, 45% obtained virological success. In a remote, resource-limited setting in decentralized health centers, virological and immunological assessments of patients on antiretroviral therapy >12 months showed that positive health outcomes are achievable.


This paper aims to present an approach to design thinking and teaching that takes the students and lecturers of design disciplines outside of the studio and university campus into contexts of deep complexity – informal settlements. Conventional methods of architectural practice are deemed to be of limited use or value in informal contexts. These informallyand incrementallydeveloped contexts appear chaotic and of little architectural value at first glance but, when examined closer, intricate systems of decision-making and negotiation are revealed. The quality of spatial articulation that emerges could not have been achieved through formal planning and design processes. The informal process results in a distinctive spatial quality as well as complex and varied forms of ownership and habitation models. The resultant fluidity and dynamism of these contexts offers critical lessons in design and the interaction between the different decision-makers/agents intervening at various levels of the built environment at any given time. As students and lectures engage with these contexts, employing tools such as structured mapping exercises, a better understanding can be achieved, as well as more appropriate design-decision making strategies for future interventions. By understanding the existing energies, activities and quality of routes, nodes and thresholds within these contexts, architects are better equipped to propose contextsensitive and sustainable solutions. The intention is to better prepare students to engage in non-conventional professional practice – while the lecturers, and the institution to which they belong, are able to make meaningful contributions to a broader debate regarding the role of the profession and the professional in contexts of informality. Through this process, it is also possible to provide much-needed services to identified vulnerable communities. However, the significance of the approach goes beyond that and involves the up-skilling of residents, the gathering of crucial data about the context, acquiring critical first-hand experience of the selected settlements; it also offers lessons on action research and knowledge on sustainable and socially-relevant technical solutions. The latter is achieved by identifying possible catalyst interventions, enabling the testing of development concepts through active build projects. 1 Researcher; University of Johannesburg; 618 Musgrave Rd, Berea 4001, RSA; email@example.com 2 Associate Professor; University of Johannesburg; University of Johannesburg, Bunting Road Campus, Auckland Park, 2092, Johannesburg, RSA; email@example.com


In this study, antioxidant and antimicrobial compounds were produced from a dates seeds powder containing medium by B. firmicutes, a bacterial strain isolated from Al-Ain Alhara hot springs located in Gazan area in Saudi Arabia. The Total Antioxidant Capacity (TAC) of culture supernatant of B. firmicutes by the phosphomolybdenum was 2.5 mg/ml of culture medium, the total phenolic compounds is 5.3 mg/ml of culture medium and radical scavenging activity was done by DPPH. The greatest scavenging rate of antioxidants was 60%. In addition, its antibacterial activity was performed after treatment the culture medium with methanol or ethyl acetate. As antimicrobial ethyl acetate, extract is more effective than methanol. In both ethyl acetate and methanol extract the highest antibacterial activity was observed against E. faecalis with a maximum diameter inhibition zone of 25 mm, 15 mm respectively while, the lowest activity was detected against P. aeruginosa with inhibition diameter zone 14 mm and 10 mm respectively. Analysis by Thin Layer Chromatography (TLC) for ethyl acetate and methanol extracts revealed the presence one spot in the front in ethyl acetate while the spot of methanol come latter and maybe have another spot. The molecular mass of ethyl acetate extract was 304.53 m/z and methanol extract was 701.57 m/z as determined by MS.


The permanent form of junctional reciprocating tachycardia (PJRT) is usually refractory to drug therapy, and these patients are at risk of developing tachycardia-induced cardiomyopathy. The electrocardiogram insribes inverted P waves in leads 2, 3, aVF as well as left lateral leads, along with a P-R interval shorter than R-P interval during the tachycardia. This report describes a three-year-old male patient with PJRT who underwent successful radiofrequency catheter ablation (RFA) of accessory pathway. On transthoracic echocardiography of patient, decreased ventricular systolic function was observed. RFA was performed by applying radiofrequency pulses. Echocardiograms of the patient, two months after catheter ablation, demonstrated progressive improvement of ventricular function. Transcatheter radiofrequency ablation of accessory pathways in patients with PJRT is an effective, and possibly preferable, form of treatment, especially in cases of tachycardia refractory to multiple pharmacologic treatments or when left ventricular dysfunction is present.


Abstract The constructivist learning framework is a foundation for today's K‐12 mathematics reform. Many future teachers across the United States are being taught that this is the way students learn best. More than simply teaching teachers about constructivism, however, educators are encouraged to model reform‐based instructional strategies. A nationwide quantitative study suggests that as a whole, teacher educators are more constructivist in their instructional methods than are other higher education faculty (Goubeaud & Wenfan, 2004). In this qualitative multi‐case study, the teaching methods of 4 university instructors who teach mathematics courses to future elementary teachers were explored. The results of within‐case and cross‐case analyses demonstrate the constructivist nature of the participants' teaching methods. The results also indicate substantial variation in teaching methods, even though the participants'teaching belief are very similar.


ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Increased demand of petroleum, declining fossil fuel reserves, geopolitical instability and the environmentally detrimental effects of fossil fuels have stimulated research to search for alternative sources of energy such as plant derived biofuels. The main feedstocks for production of first generation biofuels (bioethanol) are currently sucrose and starch, produced by crops such as sugarcane, sugarbeet, maize, and cassava. The use of food crop carbohydrates to produce biofuels is viewed as competing for limited agronomic resources and jeopardizing food security. Plants are also capable of storing sugars in their cell walls in the form of polysaccharides such as cellulose, hemicelluloses and pectin, however those are usually cross-linked with lignin, making their fermentation problematic, and are consequently referred to as lignocellulosics. Current technologies are not sufficient to degrade these cell wall sugars without large energy inputs, therefore making lignocellulosic biomass commercially unviable as a source of sugars for biofuel production. In the present study genes encoding for enzymes for cellulosic, hemicellulosic and starch-like polysaccharides biosynthesis were heterologously expressed to increase the amount of fermentable sugars in sugarcane. Transgenic lines heterologously expressing CsCesA, encoding a cellulose synthase from the marine invertebrate Ciona savignyi showed significant increases in their total cellulose synthase enzyme activity as well as the total cellulose content in internodal tissues. Elevation in cellulose contents was accompanied by a rise in hemicellulosic glucose content and uronic acid amounts, while total lignin was reduced in internodal tissues. Enzymatic saccharification of untreated lignocellulosic biomass of transgenic sugarcane lines had improved glucose release when exposed to cellulose hydrolyzing enzymes.
Calli derived from transgenic sugarcane lines ectopically expressing galactomannan biosynthetic sequences ManS and GMGT from the cluster bean (Cyamopsis tetragonoloba) were observed to be capable of producing a galactomannan polysaccharide. However, after regeneration, transgenic sugarcane plants derived from those calli were unable to produce the polymer although the inserted genes were transcribed at the mRNA level. While the ectopic expression of Deinococcus radiodurans amylosucrase protein in the cytosol had a detrimental effect on the growth of transgenic lines (plants showed stunted growth through the 18 months growth period in greenhouse), contrastingly targeting the amylosucrase protein into the vacuole resulted in 3 months old transgenic lines which were having high maltooligosaccharide and soluble sugar (sucrose, glucose and fructose) levels in leaves. After 18 months growing in the greenhouse, the mature transgenic lines were morphologically similar to the untransformed lines and also contained comparable maltooligosaccharide and soluble sugar and starch amounts. The non-biosynthesis of galactomannan and amylose polysaccharides in the…


The intervention in the former Yugoslavia is a clear example of the ways in which humanitarian intervention is often deeply complicated by political concerns. Destexhe expands upon the discussion of the humanitarian mission in Bosnia begun in " The Politics of Rescue," stating that the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, in choosing a humanitarian route rather than a political one, further enabled ethnic cleansing and prolonged the conflict in the Balkans. Destexhe concludes, in agreement with Pasic and Weiss, that a strict humanitarian approach that ignores deeper political problems will only prolong such conflicts and lead to cynicism toward future humanitarian efforts.


The experimental system constructed with the medically significant yersiniae provides a powerful basic model for comparative study of factors required for expression of acute versus chronic disease. The system exploits the close genetic similarity between Yersinia pestis, the etiological agent of bubonic plague, and enteropathogenic Yersinia pseudotuberculosis and Yersinia enterocolitica. Y. pestis possesses three plasmids, of which one, shared by the enteropathogenic species, mediates a number of virulence factors that directly or indirectly promote survival within macrophages and immunosuppression. The two remaining plasmids are unique and encode functions that promote acute disease by enhancing bacterial dissemination in tissues and resistance to phagocytosis by neutrophils and monocytes. These properties are replaced in the enteropathogenic yersiniae by host cell invasins and an adhesin which promote chronic disease; the latter are cryptic in Y. pestis. Additional distinctions include specific mutational losses in Y. pestis which result in loss of fitness in natural environments plus gain of properties that facilitate transmission and infection via fleabite.


The association between childhood adversity and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptomatology has been argued to be both directly and indirectly explained through a number of psychological mechanisms. This study builds on recent findings from an analysis of childhood adversity co-occurrence that revealed 4 groups: emotional abuse, sexual abuse, and multiple (overall) abuse and a no-abuse group to investigate the relationship between PTSD experiences. Data was analyzed using a Danish stratified probability survey that included 2980 interviews of 24-year-olds. A multiple mediator model was conducted to assess the role of self-esteem, social support, and being bullied at school on the abuse types and PTSD experiences. Results indicated that the 3 mediating variables were all statistically significant with low social support exerting the strongest influence in the association between childhood adversity and PTSD experiences. Low self-esteem, however, was only associated with sexual abuse. The current study supports that there are direct and indirect effects between childhood adversity and PTSD experiences but suggests there may be additional mechanisms underlying this relationship. Further exploration into underlying mechanisms will promote and inform intervention and treatment programs.


IMPORTANCE
Acetazolamide is commonly used to treat idiopathic intracranial hypertension (IIH), but there is insufficient information to establish an evidence base for its use.

OBJECTIVE
To determine whether acetazolamide is beneficial in improving vision when added to a low-sodium weight reduction diet in patients with IIH and mild visual loss.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS
Multicenter, randomized, double-masked, placebo-controlled study of acetazolamide in 165 participants with IIH and mild visual loss who received a low-sodium weight-reduction diet. Participants were enrolled at 38 academic and private practice sites in North America from March 2010 to November 2012 and followed up for 6 months (last visit in June 2013). All participants met the modified Dandy criteria for IIH and had a perimetric mean deviation (PMD) between -2 dB and -7 dB. The mean age was 29 years and all but 4 participants were women.

INTERVENTIONS
Low-sodium weight-reduction diet plus the maximally tolerated dosage of acetazolamide (up to 4 g/d) or matching placebo for 6 months.

MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES
The planned primary outcome variable was the change in PMD from baseline to month 6 in the most affected eye, as measured by Humphrey Field Analyzer. Perimetric mean deviation is a measure of global visual field loss (mean deviation from age-corrected normal values), with a range of 2 to -32 dB; larger negative values indicate greater vision loss. Secondary outcome variables included changes in papilledema grade, quality of life (Visual Function Questionnaire 25 [VFQ-25] and 36-Item Short Form Health Survey), headache disability, and weight at month 6.

RESULTS
The mean improvement in PMD was greater with acetazolamide (1.43 dB, from -3.53 dB at baseline to -2.10 dB at month 6; n = 86) than with placebo (0.71 dB, from -3.53 dB to -2.82 dB; n = 79); the difference was 0.71 dB (95% CI, 0 to 1.43 dB; P = .050). Mean improvements in papilledema grade (acetazolamide: -1.31, from 2.76 to 1.45; placebo: -0.61, from 2.76 to 2.15; treatment effect, -0.70; 95% CI, -0.99 to -0.41; P < .001) and vision-related quality of life as measured by the National Eye Institute VFQ-25 (acetazolamide: 8.33, from 82.97 to 91.30; placebo: 1.98, from 82.97 to 84.95; treatment effect, 6.35; 95% CI, 2.22 to 10.47; P = .003) and its 10-item neuro-ophthalmic supplement (acetazolamide: 9.82, from 75.45 to 85.27; placebo: 1.59, from 75.45 to 77.04; treatment effect, 8.23; 95% CI, 3.89 to 12.56; P < .001) were also observed with acetazolamide. Participants assigned to acetazolamide also experienced a reduction in weight (acetazolamide: -7.50 kg, from 107.72 kg to 100.22 kg; placebo: -3.45 kg, from 107.72 kg to 104.27 kg; treatment effect, -4.05 kg, 95% CI, -6.27 to -1.83 kg; P < .001).

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE
In patients with IIH and mild visual loss, the use of acetazolamide with a low-sodium weight-reduction diet compared with diet alone resulted in modest improvement in visual field function. The clinical importance of this improvement remains to be determined.

TRIAL REGISTRATION
clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT01003639.


Previous studies have decomposed South African income inequality into inequality between and within the population groups defined by the apartheid regime's racial classification system. While a substantial fraction of total inequality can be attributed to differences in mean income levels between those population groups, the level of inequality within the racial groups has been found to contribute more to total inequality. Yet few investigations have attempted to elucidate inequality within these population groups. This study therefore explores the extent to which inequality in a joint sample of African and coloured individuals can be attributed specific labour-market related characteristics of their households or household heads. The analyses apply the Theil-L measure of inequality to the distribution of a consumption bundle in a household survey data set from 1995. The education level of household heads is the strongest single explanatory factor, followed by households' main income sources. The race, age categories, or gender of household heads do not account for large fractions of inequality in this sample.


ABSTRACT Small (s)RNAs of 21 to 24 nucleotides are associated with RNA silencing and methylation of DNA cytosine residues. All sizes can move from cell-to-cell and long distance in plants, directing RNA silencing in destination cells. Twenty-four nucleotide sRNAs are the predominant long-distance mobile species. Thousands move from shoot to root, where they target methylation of transposable elements both directly and indirectly. We derive several classes of interaction between small RNAs and methylation and use these to explore the mechanisms of methylation and gene expression that associate with mobile sRNA signaling.


This Article reports on four federal jury challenges in which the trial judge or defendants retained the author to provide research on jury selection plans. The research shows a persistent and substantial loss of representation for African Americans and Hispanics on federal juries, even though no intentional discrimination took place. Problems with undeliverable jury summonses, as well as failure to respond to summonses, were the main causes of departures from the ideal of cross-sectional jury selection. However, a cramped understanding of what it takes for a defendant to prove that minority jurors were systematically excluded, as required by Duren v. Missouri, kept three of the four judges in our challenges from responding to the problems. This Article argues for a legal change in the Duren test so as to enable federal courts to construct representative jury wheels.