Hydrological and chemical data of 1996 and 1997 are used to evaluate the relative contributions of atmospheric deposition and urban/industrial wastewaters to the nitrogen budget of Lago Maggiore. The atmospheric load of nitrogen was about 80% of the total input to the lake, with negligible variations in dry (1997) and wet (1996) years. A comparison of the two study years with the yearly N budgets evaluated from 1978 to 1998, showed that the N load was higher with increasing amounts of precipitation/water inflow. Soils and vegetation act as N sinks; the % retention varies between 40-60% for the forested catchments with low population density in the central-northern part of the basin, to values close to zero or even negative in the south, indicating a net leaching from the soils. The Traaen & Stoddard (1995) approach revealed that all the catchments of the major inflowing rivers were oversaturated with nitrogen. The long-term trend of nitrogen concentrations in Lago Maggiore (1955-99) is analogous to the trend for atmospheric deposition (1975-99), which is related to emissions of nitrogen oxides and ammonia in the atmosphere. The relationships between the present N load and in-lake concentrations are discussed using a budget model, which is also used to infer the pristine load of N. The close relationships between N trends in lakes Maggiore, Como and Iseo, and the geographical and anthropogenic features common to their catchments, suggest that the results obtained for Lago Maggiore can be extended to a wider area.


These essays by leading scientists and philosophers address conceptual issues that arise in the theory and practice of evolutionary biology. The third edition of this widely used anthology has been substantially revised and updated. Four new sections have been added: on women in the evolutionary process, evolutionary psychology, laws in evolutionary theory, and race as social construction or biological reality. Other sections treat fitness, units of selection, adaptationism, reductionism, essentialism, species, phylogenetic inference, cultural evolution, and evolutionary ethics.Each of the twelve sections contains two or three essays that develop different views of the subject at hand. For example, the section on evolutionary psychology offers one essay by two founders of the field and another that questions its main tenets. One sign that a discipline is growing is that there are open questions, with multiple answers still in competition; the essays in this volume demonstrate that evolutionary biology and the philosophy of evolutionary biology are living, growing disciplines. ContributorsRobin O. Andreasen, Kwame Anthony Appiah, David A. Baum, John H. Beatty, David J. Buller, Leda Cosmides, James Donoghue, Steven J. Farris, Joseph Felsenstein, Susan K. Finsen, Joseph Fracchia, Stephen Jay Gould, Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, David L. Hull, Philip Kitcher, R. C. Lewontin, Elisabeth Lloyd, Ernst Mayr, Michael Ruse, John Maynard Smith, Elliott Sober, John Tooby, C. Kenneth Waters, George C. Williams, David Sloan Wilson, E. O. Wilson


In 1980, Richard Cytowic was having dinner at a friend's house, when his host exclaimed, "Oh, dear, there aren't enough points on the chicken." With that casual comment began Cytowic's journey into the condition known as synesthesia.The ten people in one million who are synesthetes are born into a world where one sensation (such as sound) conjures up one or more others (such as taste or color). Although scientists have known about synesthesia for two hundred years, until now the condition has remained a mystery. Extensive experiments with more than forty synesthetes led Richard Cytowic to an explanation of synesthesia--and to a new conception of the organization of the mind, one that emphasized the primacy of emotion over reason.Because there were not enough points on chicken served at a dinner almost two decades ago, Cytowic came to explore a deeper reality that he believes exists in all individuals, but usually below the surface of awareness. In this medical detective adventure, he reveals the brain to be an active explorer, not just a passive receiver, and offers a new view of what it means to be human--a view that turns upside down conventional ideas about reason, emotion, and who we are.* Not for sale in the United Kingdom and Eire


The latest episode of turbulence has been marked by an extended period of illiquidity in a large number of markets –ranging from traditionally highly liquid interbank money markets to the less-liquid structured credit markets. The event began with what was widely perceived as a credit deterioration in the US subprime mortgage market. However, this quickly raised uncertainty about the valuation of securities related to this market, thus affecting their liquidity. The rapidity with which this market illiquidity has been transmitted into funding illiquidity has been both striking and unprecedented. The event has raised questions about how market liquidity in a variety of instruments is determined in both primary and secondary markets and how mechanisms act to transmit illiquidity across markets during a period of stress. The article seeks to identify how standard concepts of liquidity can be applied to various types of markets across the globe with a view to interpreting how liquidity deteriorated so quickly. Several attributes of liquidity –types of market structures (including existence of formal intermediaries and trading venues), the construction of the instruments, and the types of investors– are used to guide the analysis. One feature that appears to be important for liquidity is the degree to which information about the risks underlying the financial instrument are well understood by both buyers and sellers. Another insight is that the expectations of market participants about liquidity and their ability to monitor it also have an impact on liquidity itself. These attributes suggest that the growth in securitization and complex structured credit products –new developments in the transfer of credit risk– may carry with them a predilection to adverse liquidity events that will require further examination. In light of the analysis, the article identifies ways of mitigating some of the problems that arose in this latest bout of illiquidity. Because liquidity is created and maintained by the market participants themselves, most of the room for improvement rests with the private sector. It is already clear that some market practices and policies will need to change and in this context some suggestions for enhancements to financial institutions' liquidity risk management are outlined. However, given that both market and funding liquidity are intimately related to financial stability, a public good, there is also a potential role for the public sector. Hence, the tools used by central banks to maintain their role in effi cient monetary policy transmission together with financial stability will need to be reviewed.


The recent amendments to the Labour Relations Act, 1995 (the LRA) have made recruiting and organising members an easier process for trade unions.
Prior to the amendments, organisational rights could only be enjoyed by registered trade unions that were representative of the workforce. "Representative", in respect of minority rights, has been interpreted to mean about 30% of employees at a workplace. "Representative", in respect of majority rights, means a majority trade union, or two or more registered trade unions that, acting together, represent the majority of employees in a workplace.


Growing vehicle use and congestion externalities have led many to consider alternative congestion pricing mechanisms, as road pricing often has high infrastructural costs and faces public opposition. This paper explores the role of parking taxation in reducing congestion by considering a natural experiment created by the progressive January 1, 2012 Chicago parking tax increase. Exploiting differences in vehicle use across income groups, it is estimated that the approximately $2 a day parking tax increase led to a 4-6 percent reduction in total vehicle trips in high-income areas, with the largest response seen on roads more heavily used by commuters. Also found are corresponding increases in use of public transit and a 3. 1 percent aggregate reduction in vehicle trips. It is concluded that parking taxes can help mitigate congestion externalities, although they are no more than about half as effective as more efficient congestion tolls.


Empirical studies have shown so far that code smells have relatively low impact over maintenance effort at file level. We surmise that previous studies have found low effects of code smells because the effort considered is a "sheer-effort" that does not distinguish between the kinds of developers' activities. In our study, we investigate the effects of code smells at the activity level. Examples of activities are: reading, editing, searching, and navigating, which are performed independently over different files during maintenance. We conjecture that structural attributes represented in the form of different code smells do indeed have an effect on the effort for performing certain kinds of activities. To verify this conjecture, we revisit a previous study about the impact of code smell on maintenance effort, using the same dataset, but considering activity effort. Six professional developers were hired to perform three maintenance tasks on four functionally equivalent Java Systems. Each developer performs two maintenance tasks. During maintenance task, we monitor developers' logs. Then, we define an annotation schema to identify developers' activities and assess whether code smells affect different maintenance activities. Results show that different code smells affect differently activity effort. Yet, the size of the changes performed to solve the task impacts the effort of all activities more than code smells and file size. While code smells impact the editing and navigating effort more than file size, the file size impacts the reading and searching activities more than code smells. One major implication of these results is that if code smells indeed affect the effort of certain kinds of activities, it means that their effects are contingent on the type of maintenance task at hand, where some kinds of activities will become more predominant than others.


Abstract. The resolution of regional chemical/dynamical models has important effects on the calculation of the distributions of air pollutants in urban areas. In this study, the sensitivity of air pollutants and photochemical ozone production to different model resolutions is assessed by applying a regional chemical/dynamical model (version 3 of Weather Research and Forecasting Chemical model – WRF-Chemv3) to the case of Mexico City. The model results with 3, 6, 12, and 24 km resolutions are compared to local surface measurements of CO, NOx, and O3. The study shows that the model resolutions of 3 and 6 km provide reasonable simulations of surface CO, NOx, and O3 concentrations and of diurnal variations. The model tends to underestimate the measurements when the resolution is reduced to 12 km or less. The calculated surface CO, NOx, and O3 concentrations at 24 km resolution are significantly lower than measured values. This study suggests that the ratio of the city size to the threshold resolution is 6 to 1, and that this ratio can be considered as a test value in other urban areas for model resolution setting. There are three major factors related to the effects of model resolution on the calculations of O3 and O3 precursors, including; (1) the calculated meteorological conditions, (2) the spatial distribution for the emissions of ozone precursors, and (3) the non-linearity in the photochemical ozone production. Model studies suggest that, for the calculations of O3 and O3 precursors, spatial resolutions (resulting from different meteorological condition and transport processes) have larger impacts than the effect of the resolution associated with emission inventories. The model shows that, with coarse resolution of emission inventory (24 km) and high resolution for meteorological conditions (6 km), the calculated CO and O3 are considerably improved compared to the results obtained with coarse resolution for both emission inventory and meteorological conditions (24 km). The resolution of the surface emissions has important effects on the calculated concentration fields, but the effects are smaller than those resulting from the model resolution. This study also suggests that the effect of model resolution on O3 precursors leads to important impacts on the photochemical formation of ozone. This results directly from the non-linear relationship between O3 formation and O3 precursor concentrations. Finally, this study suggests that, considering the balance between model performance and required computation time on current computers, the 6 km resolution is an optimal resolution for the calculation of ozone and its precursors in urban areas like Mexico City.


AIM
To study the restorative effect of Coriolus versicolor polysaccharides (CVP) on spleen injury induced by gamma-ray irradiation in mice.

METHODS
ICR Male mice, 6-8 wk old, were divided at random into 3 groups: A) normal control; B) irradiated with 1 Gy; and C) after 1 Gy irradiation, given CVP 60 mg.kg-1 (ig) daily for 10 d continuously. Body weight (BW), spleen weight (SW), relative SW (RSW), DNA synthesis of splenocytes (DNA-SS), and relative DNA-SS were measured on d 5, 12, 19, 26, and 33 after irradiation.

RESULTS
SW, RSW, DNA-SS, and relative DNA-SS decreased after irradiation. CVP enhanced the recovery of SW, RSW, DNA-SS, and relative DNA-SS inhibited by irradiation.

CONCLUSION
CVP has the restorative effect against spleen injury induced by gamma-ray irradiation in mice.


For American parents, teenage sex is something to be feared and forbidden: most would never consider allowing their children to have sex at home, and sex is a frequent source of family conflict. In the Netherlands, where teenage pregnancies are far less frequent than in the United States, parents aim above all for family cohesiveness, often permitting young couples to sleep together and providing them with contraceptives. Drawing on extensive interviews with parents and teens, "Not Under My Roof" offers an unprecedented, intimate account of the different ways that girls and boys in both countries negotiate love, lust, and growing up. Tracing the roots of the parents' divergent attitudes, Amy Schalet reveals how they grow out of their respective conceptions of the self, relationships, gender, autonomy, and authority. She provides a probing analysis of the way family culture shapes not just sex but also alcohol consumption and parent-teen relationships. Avoiding caricatures of permissive Europeans and puritanical Americans, Schalet shows that the Dutch require self-control from teens and parents, while Americans guide their children toward autonomous adulthood at the expense of the family bond.


A recent WTO case held the U.S.' export tax subsidies illegal. Despite strong political resistance, which fed a long and costly legislative process, the U.S. recently repealed these subsidies. This case and the U.S. reaction revealed that although the U.S. is the single super economic power, it is not as dominant a player as some portray it. The case also shed light on the tension between the present international trade and tax regimes and the difficulty of applying WTO law to income tax measures. This tension did not escalate earlier mainly because countries tended not to use their income tax systems for protectionism. This article suggests that the use of tax systems to protect domestic interests may increase as a consequence of economic globalization. As a result, the current disconnect between the international trade and tax regimes shall cause both regimes to be challenged, as they may both apply in some cases with different and conflicting results. The article observes that the international trade and tax regimes cannot be simply reconciled or somehow meshed together, yet, it argues that their policies could (and should) be coordinated, with some adjustments made to the present legal constructs. It suggests that such coordination would benefit from the establishment of an international tax organization, which shall be responsible to making the evolving international tax regime more compatible with the international trade regime (but not part of the WTO). The article analyzes and rejects other solutions, primarily the one I call the tax expenditure solution, which is based on the contention, rejected in this article, that the international tax and trade regimes do not conflict, which proponents are willing to subject some aspects of income tax laws to WTO scrutiny as they are, without any adjustments. Finally, the article argues that coordinating international tax and international trade policies may be beneficial to both regimes even apart from the solution of the aforementioned incongruity.


Unsteady, nonuniform flows in pipelines which experience leakage are analyzed. Particular attention is given to the orifice manifold. Plows in a continuous manifold can be treated in several ways: (1) When the leakage is of such magnitude that capacitance can be neglected, the flow is governed by a parabolic equation; (2) more generally, if elastic properties are included the governing equations become hyperbolic; and (3) impedance methods provide analytic solutions for steady periodic flows. The response patterns to various input functions are shown; it is seen that the magnitude of the leakage strongly dictates the nature of the responses. A laboratory investigation of low-frequency oscillating flows in a discrete manifold is included. For such a class of flows the parabolic equation is valid; the problem encountered is one of mass transfer, and the responses are similar to those found in diffusion problems.


Introduction: SARS-CoV-2 vaccines decrease the risk of infection. However, data on the utility of vaccines in decreasing the severity of COVID-19 need to be evaluated. This study was carried out with the primary objective to assess the severity and clinical outcome of COVID-19 infections among unvaccinated and vaccinated health-care workers (HCWs). Methods: This was a hospital-based retrospective cohort study including all HCWs who developed microbiologically confirmed COVID-19 over 6 months from January 31, 2021, to July 31, 2021 (during the second wave of COVID-19 in India). Data were recorded through a questionnaire which included demographic details, primary location of work, history of vaccination with dates, comorbidities, severity of COVID-19, and outcome. HCWs who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 before any dose of the COVID-19 vaccine were included in the "unvaccinated" group. Whereas HCWs who developed SARS-CoV-2 after a single or both doses of vaccine were included in the vaccinated group. The outcome and mortality among the vaccinated and unvaccinated groups were evaluated and compared. Results: The study included 500 HCWs who developed a microbiologically confirmed CVOID-19 infection. It was a predominantly middle-aged population with 247 unvaccinated and 253 vaccinated at the time of developing COVID-19. Only one-fourth of the population (26%) was working in the COVID-19 area and the source of COVID-19 to most was either a COVID-19 patient (39%) or a colleague (38%). Around 13% of the population had comorbidities with cardiovascular disease and diabetes being the most common. The majority of the patients were mild (71%) and most were treated at home in isolation (91%). Only 4% of the study population required intensive care. Among the vaccinated group, COVID-19 infection was predominantly mild and this difference was statistically significant as compared to the nonvaccinated. No difference was found in mortality among the two groups; however, the overall mortality was only 1%. Conclusions: SARS-CoV-2 vaccines reduce the severity of COVID-19 besides preventing infections and its spread. This can help in effective care of COVID-19 in home isolation without overburdening the health-care services. More studies including clinical parameters and microbiological components are required to understand the true extent of this protection of vaccines from severe forms of COVID-19.


Book reviews are also published online at the Society of Biblical Literature's WWW site: http:/www.bookreviews.org. For a list of books received by the journal, see http://www.bookreviews.org/books-received.html Reading the Bible in the Global Village, by Heikki Raisanen, Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, R. S. Sugirtharajah, Krister Stendahl, and James Barr. Reading the Bible in the Global Village 1. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2000. Pp. 180. $19.95 (paper). The origins and purpose of this volume are explained in a brief preface by Kent Harold Richards, the executive director of the Society of Biblical Literature. The volume represents the first in a new series to be published by the Society under the general title of "Reading the Bible in the Global Village." This series will be tied to the tradition of annual International Meetings sponsored by the Society since 1983. The volumes in the series are thus designed to provide a wider hearing for key proceedings from such meetings, if this first example serves as a model for the series, with a particular and unifying focus in mind. The present volume comes out of the 1999 International Meeting held in Helsinki and Lahti, Finland. It is a peculiar volume on various counts. First, its title bears the name of the proposed series, obscuring thereby the specific focus and rationale behind this first collection. This title, moreover, in no way captures or conveys the contents of the volume. Second, its contents reveal the presence of only three pieces from the meeting itself: the lead article, "Biblical Critics in the Global Village," by Heikki Raisanen, and two brief responses: "Critics, Tools, and the Global Arena," by R. S. Sugirtharajah, and "Dethroning Biblical Imperialism in Theology," by Krister Stendahl. The rest constitute a hodgepodge of material: (1) an extended response by Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, "Defending the Center, Trivializing the Margins," written for the volume in light of the critical focus on her work on the part of Raisanen; (2) two previously published pieces: Stendahl's article "Biblical Theology, Contemporary," from the IDB (1962), and Schissler Fiorenza's 1987 SBL presidential address, "The Ethics of Biblical Interpretation: Decentering Biblical Scholarship," both reprinted in the volume as a result of their prominence in Raisanen's article; (3) another previously published article, slightly edited, by James Barr: "Evaluation, Commitment, and Objectivity in Biblical Theology," taken from his recent The Concept of Biblical Theology: An Old Testament Perspective (London: SCM; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999), included at the suggestion of Stendahl. Lastly, given the centrality of Raisanen's contribution, with its focus on biblical criticism in global perspective, it is surprising to find, besides the presence of only one woman, only one representative from the non-Western world-and both as respondents. This is a volume, therefore, in need of more enlightened editorial direction: it cries for a proper and accurate title, a more pointed table of contents, and a broader roster of authors. In terms of its new contributions, the volume proves disappointing as well. First, one finds not a collection of authors addressing the same topic but rather a set of responses directed at a main position paper. Second, the latter is not as strong as it could be, while the responses are much too uneven, both in terms of length and sharpness. Finally, given such a structure of exposition and evaluation, a final rejoinder by Professor Raisanen would have been in order. Here I concern myself only with the position paper and the responses to it-the other entries are either well known (Sch/issler Fiorenza; Stendahl) or out of place (Barry. Raisanen's essay, a keynote address at the meeting, is clearly meant to serve as a point of departure and convergence for the volume as a whole. Unfortunately, this is not Raisanen at his best. …


Andrew Ure (1778-1857), Scottish chemist, scientific writer and professor at the University of Glasgow, was an enthusiast of the new manufacturing systems that were emerging in the nineteenth century. His Dictionary is a well-known and much-used work, which went to several editions. This, a reprint of the 1867 6th edition, is alphabetically arranged and well-illustrated with nearly 2000 wood engravings, plus numerous tables. Packed with thousands of useful technical and statistical information on material, chemical and machine processes, and industries, it covers an exceptional range of topics from manufacture and export figures of biscuits, cotton, steel or sugar, to descriptions of minerals, tools, machinery, elements, and organic chemistry. Ure's Dictionary is a standard work in nineteenth-century history and remains invaluable as a record of this extraordinary period of industrial development.


Online social media and games are increasingly replacing offline social activities. Social media is now an indispensable mode of communication; online gaming is not only a genuine social activity but also a popular spectator sport. Although online interaction shrinks social and geographical barriers, it is argued that social disparities, such as gender inequality, persists. For instance, online gaming communities have been criticized for objectifying women, which is a pressing question as gaming evolves into a social platform. However, few large-scale, systematic studies of gender inequality and objectification in social gaming platforms exist. Here we analyze more than one billion chat messages from Twitch, a social game-streaming platform, to study how the gender of streamers is associated with the nature of conversation. We find that female streamers receive significantly more objectifying comments while male streamers receive more game- related comments. This difference is more pronounced for popular streamers. We also show that the viewers' choice of channels is also strongly gendered. Our findings suggest that gendered conversation and objectification is prevalent, and most users produce strongly gendered messages.


Time series analysis is commonly used when monitoring data centers, networks, weather, and even human patients. In most cases, the raw time series data is massive, from millions to billions of data points, and yet interactive analyses require low (e.g., sub-second) latency. Aperture transforms raw time series data, during ingest, into compact summarized representations that it can use to efficiently answer queries at runtime. Aperture handles a range of complex queries, from correlating hundreds of lengthy time series to predicting anomalies in the data. Aperture achieves much of its high performance by executing queries on data summaries, while providing a bound on the information lost when transforming data. By doing so, Aperture can reduce query latency as well as the data that needs to be stored and analyzed to answer a query. Our experiments on real data show that Aperture can provide one to four orders of magnitude lower query response time, while incurring only 10% ingest time overhead and less than 20% error in accuracy.


This study aims to examine the following three hypotheses on the impact of global warming on the populations of the water strider, Aquarius paludum in the Kochi-Nankoku area (33。30'N) of Kochi prefecture, Japan through the recent data collected in 2009-2011. 1) Has the generation number increased? 2) Has aestivation appeared in adults? 3) Have overwintering adults stopped dispersing between the water surface and overwintering lands-sites far away from water and, instead, overwintered on/near the shore? Sampling data showed that the number of generations may have increased from three (1989-2002 strains) and four (2004-2008) to five (2009-2011) per year in Kochi (33。N). The ratio of adults having well developed flight muscles decreased from 45% in 1995 to 24% - 28% in 2009-2011 inoverwintering adults collected from the field in fall likely as a result of histolysis. "Mosaic-typed" wing morph group with long fore-wings and short hind-wings newly appeared in 2009-2011 in the Kochi-Nankoku overwintering populations. The mosaic-typed wings group cannot fly and the black and long fore wings might function as absorbing apparatus of sun-lights in the daytime of winter. Some overwintering adults seem to stop migrating between water bodies and overwintering sites on land far from the water bodies and overwinter, instead, near the shore. The use of Aquarius paludum as a biological indicator would be possible in the future, because this species can respond and change their reproductive and dispersal characteristics to the global change.


'Early English viols' were the most renowned and desired throughout late seventeenthand early eighteenth-century Europe and became favored for repertoire beyond the imagination of their makers. Despite their importance in the history of the viol, only about 6% of extant antique viols were made in England before the Civil War, and only a handful survive from the sixteenth century. The rarity and compromised state of extant examples makes it is difficult to describe exactly what these viols were like, or to delineate the reason for their reputation. The paucity of physical data encourages researchers to treat the more copious material from later periods and other countries as evidence when discussing these celebrated instruments. Consequently, our understanding of early English viols tends to rely on data and concepts that are alien to that culture, and which may therefore obscure the particular characteristics of these viols. Furthermore, some attempts to understand and perform early English viol music are informed more by current performance fashions than by factors that influenced the composers and players of the time, prominent among which were the particular capabilities and limitations of the instruments themselves. The Making the Tudor Viol project addresses these problems by synthesizing evidence from a variety of sources including documents, images, instruments, and music. Considered together, they will enable the creation of a more realistic view of early English viol-makers' work and its context, and lead to a fuller understanding of these important instruments. This is essential for scholars, performers and instrument-makers who all have an interest in knowing as precisely as possible what these viols were like; it will also improve our understanding of their influence on later viols and their music. This paper explains the Making the Tudor Viol approach using illustrations drawn from its early findings. The early indications are that the nature and practices of early English viol-makers were more distinct from say, sixteenth-century Italian lute makers, or later English viol makers, than is generally assumed. Findings about makers' physical and intellectual resources will be reported, and the implications for our understanding of early English viols will be discussed.


Balancing the rate of differentiation and proliferation in developing tissues is essential to produce organs of robust size and composition. Whilst many molecular regulators have been established, how these connect to physical and geometrical aspects of tissue architecture is poorly understood. Here, using high-resolution timelapse imaging, we find that dense tissue packing and complex cell geometries play a significant role in regulating differentiation rate in the zebrafish neural tube. Specifically, in regions of high cell density, progenitors are physically pushed away from the apical surface, which, in a Notch-dependent manner, leads to their differentiation. Using simulations we show that this naturally performs negative feedback control on cell number. Our results suggest a model whereby differentiation rate is carefully tuned to correct fluctuations in cell number, originating from variable cell cycle progression and inherently probabilistic differentiation programs.


Only two years separate us from the third millennium. The most important feature of our time is the pervasive spread of information in society, with new technologies being promptly introduced in all fields of activity. This phenomenon could not pass by national libraries. It should be noted, however, that libraries are probably the most conservative institutions, and the older and richer a library is, the more difficult are the problems of its modernization. This observation has certain peculiarities with regard to cartographic libraries.


Abstract. The aim of this study was to characterise the new particle formation events in a subtropical urban environment in the Southern Hemisphere. The study measured the number concentration of particles and its size distribution in Brisbane, Australia during 2009. The variation of particle number concentration and nucleation burst events were characterised as well as the particle growth rate which was first reported in urban environment of Australia. The annual average NUFP, NAitken and NNuc were 9.3×103, 3.7×103 and 5.6×103 cm−3, respectively. Weak seasonal variation in number concentration was observed. Local traffic exhaust emissions were a major contributor of the pollution (NUFP) observed in morning which was dominated by the Aitken mode particles, while particles formed by secondary formation processes contributed to the particle number concentration during afternoon. Overall, 65 nucleation burst events were identified during the study period. Nucleation burst events were classified into two groups, with and without particles growth after the burst of nucleation mode particles observed. The average particle growth rate of the nucleation events was 4.6 nm h−1 (ranged from 1.79–7.78 nm h−1). Case studies of the nucleation burst events were characterised including (i) the nucleation burst with particle growth which is associated with the particle precursor emitted from local traffic exhaust emission, (ii) the nucleation burst without particle growth which is due to the transport of industrial emissions from the coast to Brisbane city or other possible sources with unfavourable conditions which suppressed particle growth and (iii) interplay between the above two cases which demonstrated the impact of the vehicle and industrial emissions on the variation of particle number concentration and its size distribution during the same day.


The intestinal epithelium is the most rapidly renewing tissue in the body. Dynamic selfrenewal
in the intestine is achieved through continuous proliferation of intestinal stem cells,
and is under the tight regulation of numerous signalling pathways. IL-6 and PGE2 are
pleiotropic cytokines, with well characterised roles in inflammation and intestinal
tumorigenesis; however the roles for IL-6 and PGE2 in intestinal renewal during homeostasis
remain unknown.
The aim of this research was to determine the mechanisms through which autocrine and
paracrine IL-6 and PGE2 regulate tissue renewal in the small intestine and colon, respectively,
during homeostasis. This work also aimed to investigate a potential source of IL-6 and PGE2
in the intestinal lamina propria, the eosinophil.
This thesis demonstrates that in the mouse small intestine, IL-6 signalling induces pSTAT3
activation in Paneth cells, which was shown to be the site of IL-6 receptor expression. This
induced an increase in crypt cell proliferation and ISC expansion of small intestinal crypts,
most likely through IL-6-classic signalling, with involvement of the WNT signalling pathway.
The colonic epithelium expresses COX enzymes for PGE2 synthesis, and EP1-4 receptors for
PGE2 signal transduction. Autocrine PGE2 signalling was required for colonic crypt cell
proliferation during steady state renewal, which was mediated through the EP1/EP3
receptors. Paracrine signalling through the IL-6 and PGE2 pathways also induced small
intestinal and colonic crypt proliferation respectively. A potential paracrine source of IL-6
and PGE, that resides in the intestinal lamina propria during health is the eosinophil. A novel
spatial relationship between eosinophils and the stem cell niche (site of renewal) and crypt
top (site of regeneration) was identified, suggesting that eosinophils play a role in modulating
epithelial cell renewal during homeostasis.
This work demonstrates that autocrine and paracrine IL-6 and PGE2 signalling is required for
the maintenance of intestinal homeostasis.


Innovation and ˜creative destruction should thrive in the competitive, high risk and high cost environment of the North Sea. Paradoxically, uptake of new technology is slow. The focus of this research was to understand how new technology is developed and how end users make decisions about innovation. Innovation process in the literature can sometimes come across like a ˜black box without much explanation of what happens inside the box. This study seeks to explicate what transpires inside the ˜black box to improve our understanding of the innovation process. The linear models of technology-push and market-pull are too simplistic to account for the complexity of relationships and engagements that affect innovation at small and medium enterprises (SMEs) level. Subsequent models of innovation are suited to how large corporations manage innovation but neglect patterns of social interactions at the micro level where SMEs operate. These innovation models are incomplete because they relegate the importance of context and how it shapes understanding, action and outcome. This study, rooted in a social constructionist paradigm, takes a process-relational stance on entrepreneurship and innovation, recognising the dynamic relationships between social actors and context. Taking Heideggers explication of how we relate to the world, this thesis submits that innovation occurs when actors move into the ˜occurrent mode. The happenings and doings in the innovation process are treated as the results of perpetual social constructions. This study is based on extended interviews with eleven individuals in relevant roles and with direct experiences of the technical innovation construction in the oil and gas industry. The purposeful sample of research encompasses a variety of roles including technology entrepreneurs, end users of technology and venture capitalists. This study makes a number of contributions. Firstly, the research improves our understanding of how different social constructions are welded together to develop shared understanding. Secondly, a conceptual framework is presented that bridges a number of theoretical concepts, which allows us to see that innovation cannot be properly understood using simplistic models that ignores the social constructions human actors instantiate. Thirdly, the research claims that problem framing is foundational to innovation construction, where social actors collaborate to develop shared understanding, and mentally represent in the present a future that is not totally knowable. Fourthly, an alternative model of innovation construction is presented that is relational and accounts for the social constructions of process participants. Finally, a number of research implications for academics and insights for practitioners engaged in the technical innovation construction are offered.


We obtain a tight distribution-specific characterization of the sample complexity of large-margin classification with L2 regularization: We introduce the margin-adapted dimension, which is a simple function of the second order statistics of the data distribution, and show distribution-specific upper and lower bounds on the sample complexity, both governed by the margin-adapted dimension of the data distribution. The upper bounds are universal, and the lower bounds hold for the rich family of sub-Gaussian distributions with independent features. We conclude that this new quantity tightly characterizes the true sample complexity of large-margin classification. To prove the lower bound, we develop several new tools of independent interest. These include new connections between shattering and hardness of learning, new properties of shattering with linear classifiers, and a new lower bound on the smallest eigenvalue of a random Gram matrix generated by sub-Gaussian variables. Our results can be used to quantitatively compare large margin learning to other learning rules, and to improve the effectiveness of methods that use sample complexity bounds, such as active learning.


Localized delivery could decrease the systemic side effects of toxic chemotherapy drugs. The unique delivery agents we examine consist of microbubbles with an outer lipid coating, an oil layer, and a perfluorobutane gas core. These structures are 0.5-12 /spl mu/m in radius at rest. Oil layers of these acoustically active lipospheres (AALs) range from 0.3-1.5 /spl mu/m in thickness and thus the agents can carry a large payload compared to nano-scale drug delivery systems. We show that triacetin-based drug-delivery vehicles can be fragmented using ultrasound. Compared with a lipid-shelled contrast agent, the expansion of the drug-delivery vehicle within the first cycle is similar, and a subharmonic component is demonstrated at an equivalent radius, frequency, and driving pressure. For the experimental conditions explored here, the pulse length required for destruction of the drug-delivery vehicle is significantly greater, with at least five cycles required, compared with one cycle for the contrast agent. For the drug-delivery vehicle, the observed destruction mechanism varies with the initial radius, with microbubbles smaller than resonance size undergoing a symmetric collapse and producing a set of small, equal-sized fragments. Between resonance size and twice resonance size, surface waves become visible, and the oscillations become asymmetrical. For agents larger than twice the resonance radius, the destruction mechanism changes to a pinch-off, with one fragment containing a large fraction of the original volume.


Problem statement: Huge capacity for data transmission and bandwidth are becoming a need nowadays. High cost of implementation using optical fibers prevents utilization of the technology as wide as possible. Approach: Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) was a technique that offers the solution for providing better bandwidth. WDM technique allows several signals that have different wavelengths to be transmitted in a single optical fiber to the receiver without any external interference or internal interruption between the signals transmitted simultaneously. WDM technique requires splitting of signals at reaching the receivers and one of the solutions presented in this study will provide a method using inexpensive filtering device that functions efficiently as a demultiplexer that can be develop without any complication. There were a lot of systems that provided demultiplexing techniques in the industry; all the systems are expensive to be implemented. Here the study provides an effective and easy to construct demultiplexer by using colored thin films. The WDM-POF system studies the performances of thin-films to be used as demultiplexer and red thin-films will be focused. Results: In theory, the thin-films will filter out any undesired signals that pass through the fiber and the desired signal will be carried to the end-receiver. The effectiveness of each red thin- films were characterized by analyzing the insertion losses (dBm) and power output (µW). Characterization analysis in this study includes the characterization test of using the same sources towards different types of red thin-films to obtain the best film that could filter out any undesired wavelength and let only the desired wavelength to be transmitted at high percentage. An initial stage of selecting different colored films by analyzing the energy spectrum distribution curves for the potential red thin- films will then be characterized where red, blue and green LED sources were injected through the films. Small insertion loss of the signal transmitted for the same wavelength of the source and high power output will be preferred. High insertion loss and small power output are preferred for filtering out the undesired wavelengths. Comparison and characterization analysis through the samples and graph simulations provides the efficiency of the thin films that were used in the optical WDM-POF short-haul communication system. Conclusion: Optimum performance can be observed through the end-receivers that have been connected to the device developed such as the Ethernet connectivity and the result of video image received the signals as desired.


A characterization of the H-mode in Tokamak de Varennes (TdeV) is presented, combining results obtained from spectroscopic measurements with observations of global plasma parameters. Controlled L- and H-modes are obtained by applying an external bias on the divertor plate and/or by varying the plasma triangularity using similar steady-state discharges with electron cyclotron resonance heating (ECRH). A qualitative study of the impurity emission asymmetries is presented and discussed by proposing a simple model which considers that the emissivity has radial and poloidal components. The poloidal velocities are small with no significant variations with respect to the plate biasing, EC power and plasma triangularity. Toroidal rotation velocities show more consistent trends and have larger values in the H-modes with respect to the L-modes. No significant shear in the radial electric field is observed between the H- and L-modes. Differences in the electric field and in the E×B shear are observed for several discharges, but they are not consistent overall. A study on the impurity transport shows low diffusivity values in the plasma centre and high values in the edge during the H-mode. The energy confinement time decreases with the severity of the edge localized modes and, consequently, with the neutral fluxes. The presence of a toroidal torque which affects the particle transport inside the plasma plays an important role in the TdeV H-modes.


The substrate fluorescein-tyramide was combined with oligonucleotide probes directly labeled with horseradish peroxidase to improve the sensitivity of in situ hybridization of whole fixed bacterial cells. Flow cytometry and quantitative microscopy of cells hybridized by this technique showed 10- to 20-fold signal amplifications relative to fluorescein-monolabeled probes. The application of the new technique to the detection of natural bacterial communities resulted in very bright signals; however, the number of detected cells was significantly lower than that detected with fluorescently monolabeled, rRNA-targeted oligonucleotide probes.


ABSTRACT Icofungipen (formerly PLD-118) is a synthetic derivative of the naturally occurring β-amino acid cispentacin that blocks isoleucyl-tRNA synthetase, resulting in the inhibition of protein synthesis and growth of fungal cells. We investigated the efficacy, plasma pharmacokinetics, and safety of icofungipen in escalating dosages for the treatment of experimental subacute disseminated candidiasis in persistently neutropenic rabbits. Icofungipen was administered for 10 days starting 24 h after the intravenous inoculation of 103Candida albicans blastoconidia. Study groups consisted of rabbits treated with icofungipen at 4 (ICO-4), 10 (ICO-10), and 25 (ICO-25) mg/kg of body weight/day in two divided dosages, rabbits treated with fluconazole at 10 mg/kg/day, rabbits treated with amphotericin B at 1 mg/kg/day, and untreated controls. Levels of icofungipen in plasma were derivatized by phthaldialdehyde and quantified by high-performance liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection. Rabbits treated with ICO-10 (P < 0.01) and ICO-25 (P < 0.001) showed significant dosage-dependent tissue clearance of C. albicans from the liver, spleen, kidney, brain, vitreous, vena cava, and lung in comparison to untreated controls. ICO-25 cleared C. albicans from all tissues and had activity comparable to that of amphotericin B versus untreated controls (P < 0.001). Pharmacokinetics of icofungipen in plasma approximated a dose-dependent relationship of the maximum concentration of drug in serum and the area under the concentration-time curve. There was no significant elevation of the levels of hepatic transaminases, alkaline phosphatase, bilirubin, urea nitrogen, or creatinine in icofungipen-treated rabbits. Icofungipen followed dose-dependent pharmacokinetics and was effective in the treatment of experimental disseminated candidiasis, including central nervous system infection, in persistently neutropenic rabbits.


Introduction: Orthognathic surgery for correction of dentofacial deformities provides a more-symmetrical face, and functional and aesthetic benefits. The aim of this study was to evaluate the perception of buccomaxillofacial surgeons regarding the aesthetics of facial profiles patterns I, II, and III in related to sex, ethnicity, and the main therapeutic procedures. Methods: We interviewed 18 specialist surgeons or surgeons in training in buccomaxillofacial surgery by using a standardized clinical report form for aesthetic evaluation and therapeutic procedures of 12 manipulated images simulating facial profiles, sex, and race. Results: As for aesthetics, the highlights were that facial profile type I had the highest mean values, whereas facial profile type III had the lowest mean values. However, no significant differences were found between the mean values obtained in different facial profiles in relation to sex and race. The therapeutic procedures were homogeneous in profiles II and III, with higher percentages for classical procedures in the orthosurgical treatment of these dentofacial deformities. Conclusion: Facial profile I was considered more aesthetic. Furthermore, sex and racial type effects on aesthetics for the studied sample. Facial profiles I were the most difficult to assess as to therapeutic procedures, which resulted in a wide range of options in relation to profiles II and III.


OBJECTIVES
In about 50% of male infertility the underlying pathogenesis remains unknown. A recent Japanese study provided evidence that the rs6836703: G>A single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) from the ADP-ribosyltransferase 3 (ART3) gene is significantly associated with non-obstructive azoospermia. However, the functional significance of this association is unknown and replication studies in unrelated populations are thus necessary.

DESIGN
In this study, 257 fertile Czech controls of proven paternity and 98 sub-/infertile patients selected according to stringent exclusion / inclusion criteria were genotyped by High Resolution Melting (HRM) of small amplicons.

SETTING
This study was performed at University Hospital Motol - Laboratory of reproductive genetics using routinely analyzed cases.

RESULTS
Significant differences in allele distribution between fertile and sub-/infertile men were found (OR=1.78, 95% CI: 1.17-2.70; p=0.007). Following sub-stratification of cases according to their sperm counts we found that observed differences in allele distributions were increased in oligozoospermic men with sperm counts of <15 million sperm/mL (OR=1.98, 95% CI: 1.28-3.07; p=0.002). This difference was also reflected in genotype distributions between fertile and sub-/infertile men (p=0.008), and fertile versus oligozoospermic men (p=0.004).

CONCLUSIONS
Our study serves as a first replication of the original Japanese report and opens new avenues of research. Compared to the Japanese patient cohort, we provided evidence that the analyzed ART3 variant is associated with quantitative impairment of spermatogenesis.


A basic understanding of online privacy is essential to being an informed digital citizen, and therefore basic privacy education is becoming ever more necessary. Recently released high school and college computer science curricula acknowledge the significantly increased importance of fundamental knowledge about privacy, but do not yet provide concrete content in the area. To address this need, over the past two years, we have developed the Teaching Privacy Project (TPP) curriculum, http://teachingprivacy.org, which educates the general public about online privacy issues. We performed a pilot of our curriculum in a university course for non-CS majors and found that it was effective: weeks after last being exposed, students' privacy attitudes had shifted. In this paper, we describe our curriculum, our evaluation of it in the classroom, and our vision for future privacy education.


Abstract Binary stars of the ζ Aurigae type (eclipsing systems containing a cool giant plus a hot main-sequence star) offer a unique and highly effective method of probing a stellar chromosphere. Close to occultation the main-sequence star acts as a light probe behind the giant's chromosphere, enabling an observer to detect changing conditions in that chromosphere along the line of sight. The technique is powerful, the effects dramatic. However, presently known eclipsing systems number only about 10, and a much greater sample is required for meaningful statistics of the properties of stellar chromospheres. New surveys of fainter binaries should be investigated for eclipses in order to gain more information on chromospheres in general. Such information is vital for modelling stellar photospheres, from which abundances are derived. This paper describes the very different behaviour of chromospheric material in three 3rd-magnitude giants.


This year's report is titled 'Shifting Paradigms' to, in part, emphasise the continued growth and development of the European Alternative Finance Industry, but also underscore that these patterns of growth can develop and change as the sector continues to develop and mature. Throughout the region, platforms have continued to grow, respond to regulation, and expand operations internationally. In some regions, model prominence has shifted, allowing for others to grow. At times, this has been a response to the development or lack of regulation, or simply a result of competing market forces.

Last year's report, 'Expanding Horizons', sought to exemplify the positive developments in European Alternative Finance in 2016 and foreshadowed future developments in the industry. The sector as a whole has continued to expand, and across the board has grown in volume. As with last year, this study captured market data from 45 European countries, and continued to explore issues with regard to innovation, research and development, as well as internationalisation trends.

This year's European Alternative Finance Industry Report has been produced by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance at Cambridge Judge Business School and the University of Agder. This report was generously supported by Invesco and the CME Group Foundation.

Highlights from the report

This year's study gathered data from 269 platforms with reported operations in 2017. These 269 platforms were responsible for 519 unique data entries across 45 countries in Europe. The study shows that the total European online alternative finance market (including the UK) grew by 36 per cent to reach €10.44 billion in 2017. The United Kingdom is still the largest individual alternative finance market, albeit with a declining market share from 73 per cent in 2016 to 68 per cent in 2017. Excluding the UK from overall volume, the European online alternative finance industry grew 63 per cent from €2.06 billion to €3.37 billion in 2017.

France (€661.37 million), Germany (€595.41 million) and the Netherlands (€279.93 million) remained the top three national markets for online alternative finance by market volume in Europe, excluding the United Kingdom.

For the fourth year in a row P2P Consumer Lending accounted for the largest market share of European Alterative Finance (excluding the UK). This model accounted for 41 per cent of all volume and grew by 99.8 per cent from €697 million in 2016 to €1.39 billion in 2017.

Internationalisation of platforms is on the rise. In 2017, 88 per cent of platforms reported some level of cross-border inflows, while 61 per cent reported outflows. This represents a growth of 11 per cent for platforms reporting cross-border inflows, and 17 per cent growth for those reporting cross-border outflows. Despite growth in international orientation of platforms, the extent of actual localisation of services, interface and brand remains limited.

While in 2016, models that were associated with larger volumes reported a higher level of change to their business model, the opposite trend was observed in 2017. For the top five model types by volume, 50 per cent or more of platforms reported making no changes to their business model. Product innovation, however, was high across the board.

As was observed in the previous year, most innovation focused on improving the operational efficiency of platforms through process streamlining and automation, as well as optimising payment processing and customer verification. Additionally, as with last year, the secondary research focus for platforms in Europe regards investment and development in customer service features, predominantly social media and promotional tools, community management, and CRM systems.

As regulatory regimes across Europe continue to develop, so to do the perceptions of platforms on the adequacy of these regulations. In general, while overall views are still divided, it appears that the level of approval has been increasing.


There is still a lack of understanding why there is little progress when it comes to women seeking and obtaining top management and leadership positions in organizations today, and this is particularly true within the cross-cultural and international management and leadership contexts. One step forward, however, is to understand current work and trends in research and theory to identify these gaps. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the most recently published literature on the role of gender in management teams within and across cultures.,This content analysis has examined the most recent literature (i.e. January 1, 2010 to March 1, 2016) in 15 influential academic journals within the cross-cultural and international management field. The study has analyzed 152 primary and 85 secondary articles that met the strict criteria of the study.,Results include findings on journals/articles, gender of authors, countries included in data collection, constructs measured, tone of manuscripts (i.e. adverse outcomes associated with gender compared to the neutral/mixed or positive effects), and the theoretical frameworks utilized in the articles.,This analysis will be useful for researchers, theorists, and practitioners in understanding the current knowledge base and in discovering the emerging gaps and needs.,This is the first study of its kind within gender and cross-cultural/international management. The findings clearly show gaps in research and theory that will help guide future work.


The single-sided and dual-sided high reflective mirrors were deposited with ion-beam sputtering (IBS). When the incident light entered with 45 degrees, the reflectance of p-polarized light at 1064 nm exceeded 99.5%. Spectrum was gained by spectrometer and weak absorption of coatings was measured by surface thermal lensing (STL) technique. Laser-induced damage threshold (LIDT) was determined and the damage morphology was observed with Lecia-DMRXE microscope simultaneously. The profile of coatings was measured with Mark III-GPI digital interferometer. It was found that the reflectivity of mirror exceeded 99.9% and its absorption was as low as 14 ppm. The reflective bandwidth of the dual-sided sample was about 43 nm wider than that of single-sided sample, and its LIDT was as high as 28 J/cm2, which was 5 J/cm2 higher than that of single-sided sample. Moreover, the profile of dual-sided sample was better than that of substrate without coatings.


Thucydides has long been celebrated for the unflinching realism of his presentation of political life. And yet, as some scholars have asserted, his work also displays a profound humanity. In the first thorough exploration of the relation between these two traits, Clifford Orwin argues that Thucydides' humanity is not a reflection of the author's temperament but an aspect of his thought, above all of his articulation of the central problem of political life, the tension between right and compulsion. This book provides the most complete treatment to date of Thucydides' handling of the problem of injustice, as well as the most extensive interpretations yet of the speeches in which it comes to light. Thucydides does not merely display the weakness of justice in the world, but joins his characters in exploring the implications of this weakness for our understanding of what justice is. Orwin pursues this question through Thucydides' work and relates it to the historian's other leading concerns, such as the contrast between the Athenian way and the Spartan way, the role of piety in political life, the interaction of foreign and domestic politics, and the role of statesmanship in a world dominated by frenzies of hope, fear, and indignation. Above all, Orwin demonstrates the richness, complexity, and daring of Thucydides' articulation of these issues.


Background: Previous studies have shown that the mean monocyte volume was significantly increased in postsurgical patients with bacterial infection. To further validate its potential clinical usefulness, we compare the monocyte volume index (MV-index), which is defined as ΔMMV × ΔMMV-SD, (where the changes in Mean Monocyte Volume (MMV) and its Standard Deviation (MMV-SD) before and after surgery called ΔMMV and ΔMMV-SD, respectively) with PCT in terms of diagnostic sensitivity and specificity for post-surgical bacterial infection.
Methods: Blood samples from 223 cardiac surgical patients without postsurgical infection, and 63 cardiac surgical patients complicated with postsurgical bacterial infection were studied.
Results: There are no statistically significant differences for WBC count and monocyte percentage prior to or after surgery between postsurgical non-infected and infected patients. However, the MV-index is significantly increased in postsurgical infected patients when compared with non-infected patients (P<0.05). Furthermore, the MV-index was correlated well with PCT on the second and third day after surgery. The receiver-operating characteristics analysis reveals the MV-index and PCT have the similar areas under curves (0.908, 0.910 on the second day and 0.955, 0.956 on the third day postsurgery, respectively).
Conclusion: MV-index shows comparable sensitivity and specificity to PCT for predicting postsurgical bacterial infection. It may be an effective postoperative infection indicator for clinical diagnosis.


In the present study, a series of novel 3-chloro-1-(5-((2-oxo-2H-chromen-4-yl)thio)-4-phenyl thiazol-2-yl)-4-substituted phenyl azetidin-2-ones (7a-j) have been efficiently synthesized in five steps by the use of acetophenone, thiourea, 4-mercapto coumarin and chloro-acetyl-chloride. The structures of all the newly synthesized analogues were characterized by 1H-NMR, 13C-NMR spectroscopy and mass analysis. All the final synthesized analogues were examined for their preliminary in vitro antibacterial activity against Gram-positive (Staphylococcus aureus and Streptococcus pyogenes) Gram-negative (Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa) bacteria and antifungal activity against (Candida albicans, Aspergillus niger and Aspergillus clavatus) strains by using broth dilution technique. The results of antimicrobial study revealed that some of the newly synthesized compounds exhibits potent activity against the present specific microbial strains.
Graphical Abstract


The geological model (lithology and structure) developed for use in geotechnical engineering projects at Finsch Mine, Northern Cape Province, is described in this paper. The lithology model is presented as a detailed stratigraphic column. This study provides new lithofacies descriptions and suggests formation boundary positions for the upper Campbellrand Subgroup stratigraphy exposed by the open pit and underground tunnel network at the mine. The Klippan Formation lagoonal facies, the Kogelbeen Formation subtidal facies and the Gamohaan Formation microbialite facies are interpreted as a transgression sequence deepening into the basinal banded ironstone formation of the Asbestos Hill Subgroup.

The structural model is presented as a three-dimensional computer model, and as a summarized model of the structural domains. The structural model is of a northwest to north-northeast varying strike-slip system with "negative flower structure" geometry. Two phases of open folding have developed one trending east-southeast and the other parallel to the faults. Four sub-vertical joint sets are described. The structures are identified as an attenuated expression of the late-stage events of the Namaqua-Natal orogeny at circa 1Ga. The authors suggest that the latest phase of deformation was caused by oblique collision tectonics expressed initially as compression from the south-southwest producing transtensional north-northwest strike-slips faults with a dextral shear sense. Compression may have then swung to the west-southwest producing fault-parallel folds and a conjugate joint set.

The described structures were utilized during kimberlite emplacement, including the early intrusion of northeast striking kimberlite dykes. The mechanics of kimberlite emplacement are not discussed, but this work provides important data for such future research.


Application Specific Programmable Processors (ASPP) provide efficient implementation for any of m specified functionalities. Due to their flexibility and convenient performance-cost trade-offs, ASPPs are being developed by DSP, video, multimedia, and embedded lC manufacturers. In this paper, we present two low-cost approaches to graceful degradation-based permanent fault tolerance of ASPPs. ASPP fault tolerance constraints are incorporated during scheduling, allocation, and assignment phases of behavioral synthesis: Graceful degradation is supported by implementing multiple schedules of the ASPP applications, each with a different throughput constraint. In this paper, we do not consider concurrent error detection. The first ASPP fault tolerance technique minimizes the hardware resources while guaranteeing that the ASPP remains operational in the presence of all k-unit faults. On the other hand, the second fault tolerance technique maximizes the ASPP fault tolerance subject to constraints on the hardware resources. These ASPP fault tolerance techniques impose several unique tasks, such as fault-tolerant scheduling, hardware allocation, and application-to-faulty-unit assignment. We address each of them and demonstrate the effectiveness of the overall approach, the synthesis algorithms, and software implementations on a number of industrial-strength designs.


With the increasing complexity of today's spacecrafts, there exists a concern that the on-board flight computer may be overburdened with various processing tasks. Currently available processors used by NASA are struggling to meet the requirements of scientific experiments [1, 2]. A new computational platform will soon be needed to contend with the increasing demands of future space missions. Recently developed hybrid field-programmable gate arrays (FPGA) offer the versatility of running diverse software applications on embedded processors while at the same time taking advantage of reconfigurable hardware resources, all on the same chip package. These tightly coupled HW/SW systems consume less power than general-purpose singleboard computers (SBC) and promise breakthrough performance previously impossible with traditional processors and reconfigurable devices. This thesis takes an existing floating-point intensive data processing algorithm, used for on-board spacecraft Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectrometry, ports it into the embedded PowerPC 405 (PPC405) processor, and evaluates system performance after applying different hardware and software optimizations and architectural configurations of the hybrid-FPGA. The hardware optimizations include Xilinx's floating-point unit (FPU) for efficient single-precision floating-point calculations and a dedicated single-precision dot-product co-processor assembled from basic floating-point operator cores. The software optimizations include utilizing a non-ANSI single-precision math library as well as IBM's PowerPC performance libraries recompiled for double-precision arithmetic only. The outcome of this thesis is a fully functional, optimized FTIR spectrometry algorithm implemented on a hybrid-FPGA. The computational and power performance of this system is evaluated and compared to a general-purpose SBC currently used for spacecraft data processing. Suggestions for future work, including a dual-processor concept, are given.


Empathy is a multi-dimensional concept with affective and cognitive components, the latter often referred to as Theory of Mind (ToM). Impaired empathy is prevalent in people with neuropsychiatric disorders, such as personality disorder, psychopathy, and schizophrenia, highlighting the need to develop therapeutic interventions to address this. Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), a non-invasive therapeutic technique that has been effective in treating various neuropsychiatric conditions, can be potentially used to modulate empathy. To our knowledge, no systematic reviews or meta-analyses in this field have been conducted. The aim of the current study was to review the literature on the use of rTMS to modulate empathy in adults. Seven electronic databases (AMED, Cochrane library, EMBASE, Medline, Pubmed, PsycInfo, and Web of Science) were searched using appropriate search terms. Twenty-two studies were identified, all bar one study involved interventions in healthy rather than clinical populations, and 18 of them, providing results for 24 trials, were included in the meta-analyses. Results showed an overall small, but statistically significant, effect in favour of active rTMS in healthy individuals. Differential effects across cognitive and affective ToM were evident. Subgroup analyses for cognitive ToM revealed significant effect sizes on excitatory rTMS, offline paradigms, and non-randomised design trials. Subgroup analyses for affective ToM revealed significant effect sizes on excitatory rTMS, offline paradigms, and non-randomised design trials. Meta-regression revealed no significant sources of heterogeneity. In conclusion, rTMS may have discernible effects on different components of empathy. Further research is required to examine the effects of rTMS on empathy in clinical and non-clinical populations, using appropriate empathy tasks and rTMS protocols.


Abstract Phytosauria is a nearly cosmopolitan clade of large, quadrupedal, carnivorous archosauriforms. They are known unambiguously from Late Triassic deposits, although the clade's ghost lineage extends at least to the late Early Triassic. Their nares are uniquely located close to the orbits rather than anteriorly in the rostrum as in modern crocodylians, and the rostrum is formed by elongated premaxillae bearing many teeth. Phytosaurs have roughly triangular, ornamented paramedian osteoderms, rounder appendicular osteoderms, and a unique 'gular shield' assembled from multiple, irregular osteoderms under the throat. Phytosaurs are reconstructed as semi-aquatic because of their general similarity to modern crocodylians and common preservation in fluvial and shallow-marine deposits. Currently, over thirty species are recognized. New specimens continue to be collected, some representing new taxa. The taxonomic status of other named taxa is uncertain and requires re-investigation. Since their discovery, phytosaurs have been used as biostratigraphic and biochronological index taxa for correlating Late Triassic sediments worldwide. Recent systematic and taxonomic revisions cast doubt on some of those correlations. Our understanding of the evolution of Phytosauria is far from complete. With reevaluation of well-known specimens, rigorous and comparative morphological descriptions, and robust phylogenetic hypotheses of ingroup relationships, studies of phytosaurs can address larger palaeobiological questions.


BACKGROUND
Growing up with congenital heart disease (CHD) often means transfer to adult care and lifelong medical follow-up. An optimal transition process usually involves a multipart collaboration between the patient, their parents and other family members, and the healthcare providers. Taking an active role while knowing when it is time to step aside can be difficult for all the concerned parties, even the healthcare professionals. The aim of the present study therefore, was to explore parents' expectations and needs during their adolescent's transition to adult care.

METHOD
Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 18 parents of 16 adolescents (aged 13-18 years) with CHD in 4 pediatric cardiology settings in Sweden. The interviews were analysed with qualitative content analysis.

RESULTS
The analysis resulted in 2 main themes: (a) Feeling secure-the importance of being prepared and informed. This theme focused on the need to be prepared and informed about transition and future transfer to adult care. (b) Recognizing when to hand over at the right time. This theme addressed the process of handing over the responsibility from the parent to the adolescents and contained handing over from pediatric care to adult care.

CONCLUSION
Being prepared and informed about the upcoming transition process was essential. The parents underlined the importance of being involved in the transition planning for gradually handing over responsibility to the adolescent. They also considered establishing contact with the adult healthcare team before transfer as important and needed to be assured that CHD-related information of importance for the young person's daily life would be given.


The first part of this article focused on the way the midwife–client relationship has evolved, and how this has affected the way midwives relate to each other and the women for whom they care. Recent policy initiatives (Department of Health, 1993; Department of Health, 1997) have, to a certain extent, made midwifery practice more daunting, challenging and complex, and some midwives have stated that they do not get the support they require within the current model of statutory supervision (Association of Radical Midwives, 1995; M Kirkham, 1998; personal communication). Therefore supporting midwives and equipping them with the skills to take innovative and truly woman-centred care forward must become a priority. This article addresses the therapeutic relationship that exists between midwives and their clients, and encourages supervisors of midwives and midwifery managers to consider alternative ways that they and their organizational structures could offer support to midwives. The concept of clinical superv...


This paper identifies the directions in which new developments in educational planning are moving and draws some conclusions on how the training of specialists in the field of educational planning is likely to be affected by changing notions and practices. The first part of the paper outlines the assumptions that have characterized the field in recent years. These assumptions are concerned with planning as social rezearch: the distribution of education: the quantity, quality, and contCat of educational planning; educational planning at subnational levels; and what lies beyond the design of educational plans. Against this background, the second section briefly reviews how the changes discussed are likely to affect the role and the competencies required Of the people who will be in charge of planning ard the relationship of these changes to the training of planners. The areas discussed are the research component in training; distribution, disparities, and equality in education; the determinants of educational outcomes: regional and local planning: and the inpleaentation and evaluation of educational plans. (Author/IRT) ***********************************s*********************************** Reeroductions supplied by EDPS are the best that can be made from *he original document. ***********************************************************************


The objective is to describe a conceptual framework consisting of business ethics triangles. Models are used to describe and analyse the background and recent incidents in Systembolaget and Skandia, two large corporate organisations in Sweden. One is owned by the state and the other is privately owned. On the other hand, the conceptual framework provides a frame of reference for further research in the field of business ethics focusing on the ethical values and principles in the marketplace and in the society. Suggestions that may improve the best practise and the theory development of ethical values and principles in business ethics are presented at the end of this paper


Aquatic turtles worldwide are plagued with habitat loss due to development and shoreline alteration that destroys the terrestrial–aquatic linkage which they must cross to reproduce successfully. Furthermore, nesting habitat loss can concentrate nesting, increasing nest predator efficiency. We describe how the Paul S. Sarbanes Ecosystem Restoration Project at Poplar Island created nesting habitat for Malaclemys terrapin (Diamondback Terrapin), and document nesting success in response to construction progress and the absence of raccoons and foxes, the primary nest predators. We monitored terrapin nests throughout the nesting seasons from 2002 to 2011 to determine overall and within‐nest survivorship. Female terrapins began nesting on the restoration project within 1 year but planned construction during the study eliminated some nesting areas and opened previously inaccessible areas. Overall, nest survivorship was considerably higher than mainland nesting areas due to the absence of raccoons and foxes on the island and within‐nest survivorship was similar. Egg size, hatchling size, and the frequency of shell scute anomalies were similar to other terrapin populations, suggesting normal developmental conditions on the island. We documented annual variation in hatchling size that correlated negatively with mean air temperature during the incubation season. Our results indicate that restored or created isolated island habitat can be located rapidly by terrapins and can become an important source of recruitment in regions where nesting habitat is limited and predation is high. Poplar Island illustrates how habitat loss and restoration can affect turtle populations by revealing the changes in nesting patterns and success in newly created, predator‐free habitat.


Mining Software Repositories (MSR) has recently seen a focus to-ward ultra-large-scale datasets. Several tools exist to support these efforts, such as the Boa language and infrastructure. While Boa has seen extensive use, in its current form it is not always possible to perform the entire analysis task within the infrastructure, often requiring some post-processing in another language. This limits end-to-end reproducibility and limits sharing/re-use of MSR queries. To address this problem, we use the notion of views from the relational database field and designed a query language and runtime infrastructure extension for Boa that we call materialized views. Materialized views provide output reuse to Boa users, so that the results of prior Boa queries can be easily reused by others. This allows for computing results not previously possible within Boa and provides for increased sharing and reuse of MSR queries. To evaluate views, we performed two partial reproductions of prior MSR studies utilizing Boa's dataset and infrastructure and compare our results to the prior studies. This shows the usability of the new infrastructure, allowing analyses in Boa that were not previously possible as well as providing a previously hand created gold dataset for identifier splitting as a reusable view for other MSR researchers. We also verified the caching behavior using the queries from one of the case studies. The results show that caching works as expected and can drastically improve runtime performance.


The provision of a particle and power exhaust solution which is compatible with first-wall components and edge-plasma conditions is a key area of present-day fusion research and mandatory for a successful operation of ITER and DEMO. The work package plasma-facing components (WP PFC) within the European fusion programme complements with laboratory experiments, i.e. in linear plasma devices, electron and ion beam loading facilities, the studies performed in toroidally confined magnetic devices, such as JET, ASDEX Upgrade, WEST etc. The connection of both groups is done via common physics and engineering studies, including the qualification and specification of plasma-facing components, and by modelling codes that simulate edge-plasma conditions and the plasma–material interaction as well as the study of fundamental processes. WP PFC addresses these critical points in order to ensure reliable and efficient use of conventional, solid PFCs in ITER (Be and W) and DEMO (W and steel) with respect to heat-load capabilities (transient and steady-state heat and particle loads), lifetime estimates (erosion, material mixing and surface morphology), and safety aspects (fuel retention, fuel removal, material migration and dust formation) particularly for quasi-steady-state conditions. Alternative scenarios and concepts (liquid Sn or Li as PFCs) for DEMO are developed and tested in the event that the conventional solution turns out to not be functional. Here, we present an overview of the activities with an emphasis on a few key results: (i) the observed synergistic effects in particle and heat loading of ITER-grade W with the available set of exposition devices on material properties such as roughness, ductility and microstructure; (ii) the progress in understanding of fuel retention, diffusion and outgassing in different W-based materials, including the impact of damage and impurities like N; and (iii), the preferential sputtering of Fe in EUROFER steel providing an in situ W surface and a potential first-wall solution for DEMO.


Extended Abstract
Intrduction
Displacement of human beings across a geographical area is called migration and is performed either voluntarily or compulsory. Various factors are at play in the generating these two types of immigration. Better job opportunities, higher living standards, continuing education, or security and political stability are among the most important factors. In recent years, the Middle East has turned into an insecure and crisis-stricken zone due to war, clashes and conflicts in countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Egypt as well as the emergence of extremist and takfiri groups like Taliban, al-Qaeda and ISIS. As a result, a considerable number of Middle Eastern citizens have migrated to other parts of the world with more political stability and favorable economic situation. Europe has always been a main target of international migration especially after the formation of the European Union and the facilitation of the flow of population along its internal borders. On the other hand, political instability in the Middle East has exacerbated the flow of migration to this continent.
Metodology
The research method is descriptive-analytic and it is a fundamental in terms of its nature. The method of data gathering is based upon library studies and the use of books, articles and online resources. Investigating the political reflections of migrations from the Middle East to Europe is the aim of this study which bears significance due to the immigrations' shape and level and the widespread political impact on both the countries of origin and destination.
Results and Discussion
1.The Growing Power of Far-Right Parties
Stable political systems were established in most European countries after World War II and the defeat of fascism. However, by approaching the 1980s and the emergence of globalization, the spread of immigration and the collapse of communism, we saw the emergence of far-right parties in politics, who emphasized principles such as identity and culture instead of race while being anti-immigrants- have had considerable success both in legal and electoral terms.
Right-wing parties view immigrants as a threat in three areas:

Culturally; immigrants are a threat to the cultural homogeneity and cohesion of immigrant countries, because they cannot be absorbed in the culture of the host country;
In terms of security, immigrants and crime are linked;
Economically, immigrants get job opportunities from European citizens.

2.Weakening the Convergence in the European Union
The process of European integration has been severely weakened by the collapse of the Eastern Bloc (the disappearance of the common enemy) as well as the emergence of financial and economic crises. On the other hand, two important indicators of Christianity and culture based on secularism have always been the main criteria in accepting new members in this union. This is why the issue of immigration is seen as a challenge to the culture and national identity of European countries, because the predominant religion of immigrants entering the EU (from the Middle East) is Islam, and they are not willing to leave their Islamic rites, and this faces society and European secular culture with serious challenges.
Conclusions
Lack of promising prospects, prolonged wars and conflicts, inefficiencies of political systems, as well as natural and human hazards have affected population movements from the Middle East to Europe as a safe haven. This has had economic, social, demographic, security and political repercussions in European countries as well as in the European Union as a whole. Manifestations of this rise in power can be traced to the national elections of European countries. In addition, the EU's failure to properly integrate migrants, as well as the lack of consensus on a unified model for the reception and organization of migrants will jeopardize the EU, which has been a good model for integration and interaction between wide differences on a continent, and may as  well push the EU to the brink of collapse.


Background Serologicalantibody levels are a sensitive marker of pathogen exposure, and advances in multiplex assays have created enormous potential for large-scale, integrated infectious disease surveillance. Most methods to analyze antibody measurements reduce quantitative antibody levels to seropositive and seronegative groups, but this can be difficult for many pathogens and may provide lower resolution information than quantitative levels in low transmission settings. Analysis methods have predominantly maintained a single disease focus, yet integrated surveillance platforms would benefit from methodologies that work across diverse pathogens included in multiplex assays. Methods/Principal Findings We developed an approach to measure changes in transmission from quantitative antibody levels that can be applied to diverse pathogens of global importance. We compared age-dependent immunoglobulin G curves in repeated cross-sectional surveys between populations with differences in transmission for multiple pathogens, including: lymphatic filariasis (Wuchereria bancrofti) measured before and after mass drug administration on Mauke, Cook Islands, malaria (Plasmodium falciparum) before and after a combined insecticide and mass drug administration intervention in the Garki project, Nigeria, and enteric protozoans (Cryptosporidium parvum, Giardia intestinalis, Entamoeba histolytica), bacteria (enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli, Salmonella spp.), and viruses (norovirus groups I and II) in children living in Haiti and the USA. Age-dependent antibody curves fit with ensemble machine learning followed a characteristic shape across pathogens that aligned with predictions from basic mechanisms of humoral immunity. Differences in pathogen transmission led to shifts in fitted antibody curves that were remarkably consistent across pathogens, assays, and populations. Mean antibody levels correlated strongly with traditional measures of transmission intensity, such as the entomological inoculation rate for P. falciparum (Spearman's rho=0.75). Seroprevalence estimates recapitulated patterns observed in quantitative antibody levels, albeit with lower resolution. Conclusions/Significance Age-dependent antibody curves and summary means provided a robust and sensitive measure of changes in transmission, with greatest sensitivity among young children. The method generalizes to pathogens that can be measured in high-throughput, multiplex serological assays, and scales to surveillance activities that require high spatiotemporal resolution. The approach represents a new opportunity to conduct integrated serological surveillance for neglected tropical diseases, malaria, and other infectious diseases with well-defined antigen targets. Author Summary Global elimination strategies for infectious diseases like neglected tropical diseases and malaria rely on accurate estimates of pathogen transmission to target and evaluate control programs. Circulating antibody levels can be a sensitive measure of recent pathogen exposure, but no broadly applicable method exists to measure changes in transmission directly from quantitative antibody levels. We developed a novel method that applies recent advances in machine learning and data science to flexibly fit age-dependent antibody curves. Shifts in age-dependent antibody curves provided remarkably consistent, sensitive measures of transmission changes when evaluated across many globally important pathogens (filarial worms, malaria, enteric infections). The method's generality and performance in diverse applications demonstrate its broad potential for integrated serological surveillance of infectious diseases.


This quantitative study focuses on EFL Methodological Procedures to cope with seventh, eighth and ninth graders mixed-ability classes at Colegio Salesiano San Jose in Santa Ana in the year 2009. The aim of this study was to find out what techniques can be applied in the English classroom to cope with mixed-ability in seventh, eighth and ninth graders. The study started with a pre-observation at Colegio Salesiano San Jose to realize that the problem existed. Then, a written test was applied to the students to know their background of the English language. After that, students attended seven weeks of free English courses in which the researchers used peer tutoring, group work techniques and varied material focused on listening and writing skills. After the course finished, the researchers applied an exit test to students to compare the students' performance after the techniques were applied. Then a questionnaire was administered to the students to know their opinion about the courses. Finally, an observation checklist was used by the researchers to collect data about students' performance in their daily classes. However, the data obtained at the end of the post observation were not enough to prove that peer tutoring and group work techniques may reduce the phenomenon of mixed-ability in the English class.


Free Speech, "The People's Darling Privilege," Struggles for Freedom of Expression in American History. Michael Kent Curtis. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2001. 520 pp. $32.95 hbk. American scholars describe freedom of expression by dissecting efforts to destroy it. That generalization by John D. Stevens of the University of Michigan is again borne out by Michael Kent Curtis's interconnected essays, Free Speech, "The People's Darling Privilege. " Curtis is one of a number of legal scholars, including David Anderson and David Rabban, who-fortunately-find First Amendment history irresistible. Professor Curtis, of Wake Forest University, has a gift for aphorism and provides a distinctive voice in studying the rise and fall of free expression in times of crisis. This book, despite some unevenness, belongs on civil libertarians' bookshelves, along with Zechariah Chafee's classic Free Speech in the United States, Leonard Levy's Emergence of a Free Press, and Norman L. Rosenberg's study of political libel, Protecting the Best Men. Curtis, aining at both scholars and a lay audience, presents a quick survey of the English and American colonial backgrounds, including an over-view of the Zenger sedition trial in colonial New York in the 1730s. This is one of the few accounts of the Zenger trial that mentions neither attorney James Alexander nor Zenger's "Philadelphia lawyer," Andrew Hamilton. Like the Rosenberg book, there is irony in the title Curtis chose. To those of us who bridle at the use of privilege rather than right to describe freedom of expression, "The People's Darling Privilege" is a disquieting title. The actual phrase came from Federalist congressman Harrison Gray Otis of Massachusetts during the Sedition Act debate. Otis complained that Jeffersonian Republicans were deluding the people with claims that the Sedition Act was threatening the "darling privilege." As Otis saw the Act, it would punish only those publications with a tendency to do harm. Professor Curtis, it should be added, provides examples indicating that the terms privilege and right were used to describe freedoms guaranteed against the central government by the First Amendment and variously provided by provisions of state constitutions. To Curtis, the 1798 "Sedition Act is not simply an artifact from a bygone era.... The issues raised by the Act go to the very heart of freedom of speech in a democracy." Perhaps what is most important about Free Speech: "The People's Darling Privilege" is the author's evocation of American abolitionists' dual fight against slavery and for freedom of expression from the 1830s through the 1850s. …


What allows research evidence to contribute to successful social policy and improve practice
in public services? The establishment of the What Works Network, a group of evidence 'clearing
houses', that summarise academic research evidence for practitioners in different policy areas, heralds a
resurgence of evidence-based approaches in British policymaking. This report outlines the existing
literature analysing the process of implementing evidence-informed policy, with a particular focus on
the field of primary and secondary education. New data, based on interviews with teachers in primary
and secondary schools, along with the analysis of existing literature, suggest that understanding the
rationale for a particular policy approach and recognising relevant contextual factors are crucial for
selecting and implementing successful policies. This suggests that local knowledge, as well as
professional judgement and expertise, are critical contributors to policymaking alongside formal
scientific research evidence.


As with many other regions in the world, more complete information on the distribution of marine habitats in the Gulf is required to inform environmental policy, and spatial management of fisheries resources will require better understanding of the relationships between habitat and fish communities. Towed cameras and sediment grabs were used to investigate benthic habitats and associated epifauna, infauna and fish communities in the central Gulf, offshore from the east coast of Qatar, in water depths of between 12 and 52 m. Six different habitats were identified: i) soft sediment habitats of mud and ii) sand, and structured habitats of iii) macro-algal reef, iv) coral reef, v) mixed reef, and vi) oyster bed. The epibenthic community assemblage of the mud habitat was significantly different to that of sand, which in turn differed from the structured habitats of coral reef, mixed reef and oyster bed, with the macroalgal assemblage having similarities to both sand and the other structured habitats. Fish assemblages derived from video data did not differ between habitats, although certain species were only associated with particular habitats. Epibenthic diversity indices were significantly lower in mud, sand and macro-algal habitats, with no differences recorded for fish diversity. Soft sediment grab samples indicated that mud habitats had the highest benthic diversity, with Shannon-Weiner values of >4, and were more diverse than sand with values of 3.3. The study demonstrates high biodiversity in benthic habitats in the central and southwestern Gulf, which may in part be due to the absence of trawling activity in Qatari waters. There is a strong influence of depth on benthic habitat type, so that depth can be used to predict habitat distribution with a high level of accuracy. The presence of outcrops of hard substrata creates a mosaic of patchy shallow structured benthic habitat across extensive areas of the offshore seabed. Such heterogeneity, and the association of commercially-exploited fish species with specific habitats, indicates that this region is well suited to a spatial approach to fisheries management.


Organic hybrid solar cells with a large open-circuit voltage, up to above that of 1.5 V standard battery voltage, were demonstrated using blends of polypyrrole: Fe2O3·ZnO nanoparticles as active-layers. The cell active-layers were readily coated in open air from relatively stable liquid dark-color polypyrrole-based dispersions, which were synthesized using appropriate surfactants during the in situ polymerization of pyrrole with FeCl3 or both H2O2 and FeCl3 as the oxidizers. The performance of the cells depends largely on the synthesized blend phase, which is determined by the surfactants, oxidizers, as well as the reactant ratio. Only the solar cells fabricated from the stable dispersions can produce both a high open-circuit voltage (>1.0 V) and short-circuit current (up to 7.5 mA cm−2) due to the relatively uniform porous network nanomorphology and higher shunt to series resistance ratio of the active-layers. The cells also display a relatively high power-conversion efficiency of up to ∼3.8%.