1 The long‐term impact of changes in land use, fire and climate on species diversity in Australia are only just beginning to be understood. We combined fine‐resolution palaeoecological proxies for terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems to investigate the responses of a tropical rain forest catchment over the last 700 years. 2 Sediment cores were sampled at 1‐cm intervals to a depth of 100 cm from Lake Euramoo on the Atherton Tableland of north‐east Queensland, dated and analysed for pollen, charcoal, diatom, chironomid and inorganic content. 3 The pollen and charcoal record shows a rapid loss of forest diversity (particularly the long‐lived taxa Agathis and Podocarpus) and increased burning coinciding with the arrival of European settlers. The aquatic environment is also subject to rapid changes at this time, with a possible increase in pH and subsequent shifts in local algal and insect communities. This event was outside the historic range of variability in both rain forest and aquatic communities. 4 The present mosaic of vegetation types is a complex function of environmental changes operating across a range of spatial and temporal scales: millennial climate change, short‐term climatic variations associated with El Niño events and, most significantly, a shift from indigenous to 'European' land‐use practices, including clearance and burning activities associated with the timber and farming industry between about ad 1880 and 1920. 5 The establishment of a World Heritage reserve around the lake catchment and the suppression of fire over the last 50 years have not yet restored the terrestrial or aquatic ecosystem to its pre‐European state and are unlikely to, given the current predictions of future climate change. This supports the notion that ecological and climate thresholds are not necessarily the same, and that the effects of crossing them are not necessarily reversible. Retrospective studies of the historic range of variability within small catchments can provide an understanding of the limits of natural and human‐induced variability that can inform management decisions and resource planning.


Nowadays, there have been great advances in the location technology. The personal
positioning oers a very interesting eld of research because the user walking has an
unpredictable behaviour and it is dicult to assume predened routes or to take into
account other implemented location techniques for vehicles or robots.
An approach for integration between inertial navigation systems (INS) and GPS is
presented. GPS is a navigation aid accurate and reliable but susceptible to interference
like multipath. An INS is very accurate over short periods, but its errors drift unbounded
over time. Blending INS with GPS can remedy the performance issues of both.
GPS is often combined with other sensors like accelerometers, gyroscopes or magnetometers.
The data fusion from these sensors is very important because they allow us
to calculate the position and orientation constantly. In this project we are interested in
analysing the system behaviour when the signal GPS is unavailable as when the signal is
blocked or in indoor environments. The analysis will be carried out through the assessment
of a Dead Reckoning algorithm to improve the position information. The system
was tested both indoor and outdoor of the Thales building. The personal positioning
system is made up of: a receiver GPS, an electronic compass, and the IMU.
There are many types of integration methods, and sensors vary greatly, from the
complex and expensive, to the simple and inexpensive, in this project it has been used
low cost sensors in a loosely coupled approach.
A Kalman alter for closed loop integration between GPS and INS is done. The lter
propagates and estimates the error states, which are fed back to the INS for correction
of the internal navigation states. The integration algorithm has been implemented on
Matlab. The algorithm receives the GPS and inertial measurements via serial port to
later process all the data. The algorithm has been used to experimentally test and
compare navigation performance.


The Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) provides a standard method for
transporting multi-protocol datagrams over point-to-point links. Layer
Two Tunneling Protocol (L2TP), facilitates the tunneling of PPP
packets across an intervening packet-switched network. And yet a third
protocol, PPP over Ethernet (PPPoE) describes how to build PPP
sessions and to encapsulate PPP packets over Ethernet. L2TP Active
Discovery Relay for PPPoE describes a method to relay Active Discovery
and Service Selection functionality from PPPoE over the reliable
control channel within L2TP. Two new L2TP control message types and
associated PPPoE-specific Attribute Value Pairs (AVPs) for L2TP are
defined. This relay mechanism provides enhanced integration of a
specific feature in the PPPoE tunneling protocol with L2TP. This memo
provides information for the Internet community.


Recently it was shown that dark matter with mass of order the weak scale can be charged under a new long-range force, decoupled from the Standard Model, with only weak constraints from early Universe cosmology. Here we consider the implications of an additional charged particle C that is light enough to lead to significant dissipative dynamics on galactic times scales. We highlight several novel features of this model, which can be relevant even when the C particle constitutes only a small fraction of the number density (and energy density). We assume a small asymmetric abundance of the C particle whose charge is compensated by a heavy X particle so that the relic abundance of dark matter consists mostly of symmetric X and X̄, with a small asymmetric component made up of X and C. As the universe cools, it undergoes asymmetric recombination binding the free Cs into (XC) dark atoms efficiently. Even with a tiny asymmetric component, the presence of C particles catalyzes tight coupling between the heavy dark matter X and the dark photon plasma that can lead to a significant suppression of the matter power spectrum on small scales and lead to some of the strongest bounds on such dark matter theories. We find a viable parameter space where structure formation constraints are satisfied and significant dissipative dynamics can occur in galactic haloes but show a large region is excluded. Our model shows that subdominant components in the dark sector can dramatically affect structure formation.


OF DISSERTATION ANALYSIS OF ANTIVIRAL AND CHEMPROTECTIVE EFFECTS OF STRAWBERRY ANTHOCYANINS This study investigated the antiviral, chemoprotective and proliferative effects of strawberry anthocyanins on herpes simplex virus type-1, cancerous cell lines HT-29 and AGS, and normal cell lines Hs 738.St/Int and CCD-18Co. Antiviral properties were measured by infecting vero cells from adult grivet (Cercopithecus aethiops) with herpes simplex virus type-1 (HSV-1) and treating with a concentration of 1.25-20 μg/mL of strawberry anthocyanins. Infectivity and replication were quantified for herpes simplex virus type-1 using the direct plaque assay and reporting PFU/mL. Strawberry anthocyanins (>20 μg/mL) inhibited the herpes simplex virus infectivity in vero cells by 100% (p<0.05). Strawberry anthocyanins at concentrations of 5, 10 and 20 μg/mL were reduced to 75.36, 57.98, and 31.46 percent of the control (100%) (p<0.05). Chemoprotective and proliferative effects of strawberry anthocyanins were analyzed for the human cell lines AGS, Hs 738.St/Int, HT-29, and CCD-18Co at a concentration of 25-200 μg/mL and quantified using the sulforhodamine-B assay. Growth inhibition occurred at a level of ≥87% for treatment concentrations 100 and 200 μg/mL for the cancerous AGS and HT-29 cell lines (p<0.0001). Proliferation rates for the normal Hs 738.St/Int and CCD-18Co cell lines increased at all treatment concentrations of 25-200 μg/mL (p<0.0001); suggesting that the observed proliferative activity may be associated with anthocyanin treatment. Strawberry anthocyanin treatment concentration worked in a dose dependent manner for the HSV-1 and the cancerous AGS and HT-29 cells. The caspase-3 assay was performed to demonstrate potential mechanism of action and confirmed that anthocyanin treatments play a role in apoptosis by the up regulation of caspase-3. Significant differences were seen between the growth characteristics of cancerous cell lines compared to their equivalent normal cell lines (p<0.0001). In summary, the antiviral findings suggest that strawberry anthocyanin extracts could be an effective topical treatment and/or prophylactic agent for oral herpetic infections (HSV-1). Also, the in vitro chemoprotective effect of strawberry anthocyanins found may be relevant to in vivo work in the future because when anthocyanins are consumed in the diet they come in direct contact with the gastrointestinal tract and may provide chemoprotection upon contact with the stomach and gastrointestinal tract's epithelial cell layer.


The seasonality of transport and mixing of air into the lowermost stratosphere (LMS) is studied using distribu- tions of mean age of air and a mass balance approach, based on in-situ observations of SF6 and CO2 during the SPURT (Spurenstofftransport in der Tropopausenregion, trace gas transport in the tropopause region) aircraft campaigns. Com- bining the information of the mean age of air and the water vapour distributions we demonstrate that the tropospheric air transported into the LMS above the extratropical tropopause layer (ExTL) originates predominantly from the tropical tropopause layer (TTL). The concept of our mass balance is based on simultaneous measurements of the two passive tracers and the assumption that transport into the LMS can be described by age spectra which are superposition of two different modes. Based on this concept we conclude that the stratospheric influence on LMS composition is strongest in April with extreme values of the tropospheric fractions ( 1) below 20% and that the strongest tropospheric signatures are found in October with 1 greater than 80%. Beyond the frac- tions, our mass balance concept allows us to calculate the associated transit times for transport of tropospheric air from the tropics into the LMS. The shortest transit times (<0.3 years) are derived for the summer, continuously increasing up to 0.8 years by the end of spring. These findings suggest that strong quasi-horizontal mixing across the weak subtrop- ical jet from summer to mid of autumn and the considerably shorter residual transport time-scales within the lower branch of the Brewer-Dobson circulation in summer than in winter dominates the tropospheric influence in the LMS until the beginning of next year's summer.


Questions about the meaning of life elicit deep-seated disagreements driven by temperamental polarities, which in turn define fundamental attitudes, notably toward three questions: (1) How should we live in time? (2) Where does meaning come from? And (3) is there intrinsic value to suffering? Attitudes toward these questions come in two main packages I call 'Heavy' and 'Light'. In a polemical spirit, I sketch in this article some arguments in defense of the Light package. The temperaments associated with each package are more or less likely, in extreme circumstances, to engender behavior one might label as heroism or as terrorism. The main difference is that a hero, but not a terrorist, might espouse the Light package and have a sense of irony.


Summary Beekeepers in Japan have been finding as many as 1,000 dead honey bees piled up in front of hive entrances. They have observed that these mass bee deaths tend to occur at about the same time as measures are taken to control rice bugs, which appear every year during the summer in rice-producing districts. We set up and conducted controlled field studies from July to August in 2012 in a rice-producing district of northern Japan where frequent mass bee deaths are observed each summer. As had occurred in the area in previous years, and as we directly observed during our field investigations, masses of honey bees were found dead at the entrance to their hives. Samples of pollen and honey bee corpses were found to contain measurable concentrations of five active ingredients of insecticides: clothianidin, dinotefuran, ethiprole, etofenprox, and phenthoate. Insecticides containing these active ingredients are known to have been used for rice bug control in this area. Furthermore, we did not observe other known honey bee death agents in the area, such as mites and hornets. Thus, we suspected that the phenomenon of "piled honey bee death" (PD) at hive entrances is related to the influence of insecticides used to control rice bugs in paddies. The insecticide concentrations in dead honey bees were, however, extremely low compared with the median lethal dose (LD50) for honey bees. Moreover, PD was observed after rice anthesis, when bees would be collecting pollen from flowering plants other than rice. This calls into question any direct link between mass bee death and insecticides. Further study is necessary to understand insecticide exposure routes and the actual mechanism of the PD phenomenon.


To gain some perspective before we look to the future, it's important to look back and take stock. Over the past 10 years a lot has changed. It was only late 2001, that the iPod launched, Facebook was a figment of a 17-year old's imagination, only 32% of South Africans owned cell phones. We had no idea we were going to host the World Cup. 2.6-million people had access to the Internet in South Africa. Thabo Mbeki was embarking on a stable first term as president. Google was a college experiment, the global banking system was 'indestructible' and consumers believed and depended on brands and big business.


This paper reviews trends and developments in both hours of work and the organization of working time (working time arrangements) and considers their implications for the future of work. Since the Industrial Revolution there has been a downward trend in hours of work (in those countries with longitudinal data on working hours), which moved in tandem with increases in wages and productivity - creating a virtuous cycle. In recent decades, however, this trend has ceased or even reversed in some cases. This has been accompanied by a bifurcation of working hours, with substantial portions of the global workforce working either excessively long hours (more than 48 hours per week), which particularly affects men, or short hours/part-time work (less than 35 hours per week), which predominantly impacts women. Regarding the organization of working time, there has been a diversification in working time arrangements, with a movement away from the standard work week consisting of fixed working hours each day for a fixed number of days and towards various forms of 'flexible' working time arrangements (e.g. new forms of shift work, hours averaging, flexi-time arrangements, compressed work weeks, on-call work) along with demands for extended and even 24/7 availability, with widely divergent effects depending on the specific arrangement. The other key emerging issue regarding the organization of working time concerns the impact of new information and communications technologies (New ICTs), such as smartphones and tablet computers, which enable constant connectivity. These New ICTs have resulted in a blurring of the boundaries between paid working time and both the times and spaces that are normally reserved for personal life.


A new adaptive multiple access scheme based on the theory of order statistics is introduced. The proposed algorithm employs a semi-random allocation mechanism that limits subchannel selection to the highest-gain subchannels. Because the proposed low-complexity method requires relatively small channel information overhead and processing delays, it can be feasible for higher data rates where the bit duration approaches the channel coherence time. Since by its nature this method is non-iterative, it is suitable for networks with large number of users. Numerical results reveal significant system performance improvement over conventional approaches. 2008 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.


This article examines the career and writings of the minor poet ʿAbd al-Jalil Bilgrami (1660-1725) in order to explore the relation between the practice of courtly poetry and the work of politics in the Late Mughal empire. Tracing the transformations in ʿAbd al-Jalil's writings over the first decades of the eighteenth century, this article demonstrates that the poet's practice, driven as much by literary concerns as by material needs, responded to and was implicated within the politics of the Mughal court. His life thus illuminates both the opportunities and dangers opened by the practice of poetry in an era of the rapid and unprecedented dispersal of political authority in the empire.


As wireless communications technology is steadily evolving to improve the offered connectivity levels, additional research on emerging network architectures is becoming timely to understand the applicability of both traditional and novel networking solutions. This chapter concentrates on the utilization of cloud computing techniques to construct feasible system prototypes and demonstrators within the rapidly maturing heterogeneous wireless ecosystem. Our first solution facilitates cooperative radio resource management in heterogeneous networks. The second solution enables assisted direct connectivity between proximate users. The contents of the chapter outline our corresponding research and development efforts as well as summarize the major experiences and lessons learned. as might align with network opera tor's development plans. Also, this approach demonstrated some advantages over state-of-the-art multi-radio resource allocation schemes.


An important aspect of health monitoring is effective logging of food consumption. This can help management of diet-related diseases like obesity, diabetes, and even cardiovascular diseases. Moreover, food logging can help fitness enthusiasts, and people who wanting to achieve a target weight. However, food-logging is cumbersome, and requires not only taking additional effort to note down the food item consumed regularly, but also sufficient knowledge of the food item consumed (which is difficult due to the availability of a wide variety of cuisines). With increasing reliance on smart devices, we exploit the convenience offered through the use of smart phones and propose a smart-food logging system: FoodAI, which offers state-of-the-art deep-learning based image recognition capabilities. FoodAI has been developed in Singapore and is particularly focused on food items commonly consumed in Singapore. FoodAI models were trained on a corpus of 400,000 food images from 756 different classes. In this paper we present extensive analysis and insights into the development of this system. FoodAI has been deployed as an API service and is one of the components powering Healthy 365, a mobile app developed by Singapore's Heath Promotion Board. We have over 100 registered organizations (universities, companies, start-ups) subscribing to this service and actively receive several API requests a day. FoodAI has made food logging convenient, aiding smart consumption and a healthy lifestyle.


The novel is one means by which writers can provide examples of the possibilities for women in patriarchal societies to seek greater independence. Sabina Berman (1955- ) and Silvia Molina (1946- ) are modern day Mexican novelists whose writings support the betterment of the female condition in this Latin American society. This study focuses on these two authors and describes and analyzes several of their female protagonists who can be characterized as being in search of their self-identity and self-realization. The novels of interest are La Bobe (2006) and La Mujer que Buceo Dentro del Corazon del Mundo (2010) by Sabina Berman and La Manana Debe Seguir Gris (1977) and El Amor Que Me Juraste (1998) by Silvia Molina. The theoretical framework used to analyze these novels is based on The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir and on the writings of the Mexican author Rosario Castellanos. These novels provide examples of how women can challenge patriarchal social norms in order to seek their identity as an individual and their self-realization. However, to do this, women must be willing to accept the risks and costs that may accompany this self-searching. By seeking identity women can satisfy their longings and desires, but at the same time this may also produce undesired results. Nevertheless, these novels show that women have the ability to seek their personal identity if they take the initiative to do so.


This thesis concerns sufficient conditions for a matroid to admit one of two types of structural characterization: a representation over a finite field or a description as a frame matroid. We call a restriction N of a matroid M modular if, for every flat F of M , rM(F ) + r(N) = rM(F ∩ E(N)) + rM(F ∪ E(N)). A consequence of a theorem of Seymour is that any 3-connected matroid with a modular U2,3-restriction is binary. We extend this fact to arbitrary finite fields, showing that if N is a modular rank-3 restriction of a vertically 4-connected matroid M , then any representation of N over a finite field extends to a representation of M . We also look at a more general notion of modularity that applies to minors of a matroid, and use it to present conditions for a matroid with a large projective geometry minor to be representable over a finite field. In particular, we show that a 3-connected, representable matroid with a sufficiently large projective geometry over a finite field GF(q) as a minor is either representable over GF(q) or has a U2,q2+1-minor. A second result of Seymour is that any vertically 4-connected matroid with a modular M(K4)-restriction is graphic. Geelen, Gerards, and Whittle partially generalized this from M(K4) to larger frame matroids, showing that any vertically 5-connected, representable matroid with a rank-4 Dowling geometry as a modular restriction is a frame matroid. As with projective geometries, we prove a version of this result for matroids with large Dowling geometries as minors, providing conditions which imply that they are frame matroids.


Since significant percentage of fruits and vegetables go to waste during processing, investigation of how to improve the valuable products of extraction from the wastes is an undeniably effective way to save the planet. Beetroot (root, peel, and stalk) is a chief source of natural betalain color compounds and phenolic compounds with copious radical scavenging activity. The major emphasis of this work is to optimize process variables which are extraction time (10–60 min), operating temperature (20–50 °C), and aqueous ethanol solvent with the concentration of (25–75%) for effective extraction of valuable compounds such as betalains, total polyphenols, and antioxidant activity from beetroot peel. Spectrophotometric analysis was applied for quantification of those compounds. Amongst which, lowest solvent concentration (25% v/v) together with the highest temperature (50 °C) and extraction time (50 min) brought yielded higher results. The process optimization was carried out using Design Expert (11.0.3) statistical software. Overall, it can be noted that extraction process can be improved by controlling operating time and temperature, avoiding unnecessary overuse of costly solvent.


Portuguese architects, Alvaro Siza and Carlos Castanheira's China Design Museum of the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou (2012-2018) calls for a problematization of the theme of the "boundary" at different levels. In this essay the project is compared with other relevant works in regards to form, the contemporary city and design method. Formed by two bars and a partly sunken volume enclosing a triangular courtyard, the building is immediately reminiscent of other L and U plans by Siza that question private/public and interior/exterior relationships. After Rem Koolhaas published "The Generic City" in 1994, the Chinese city became the epitome of the contemporary city. Since Siza's architecture has been discussed in terms of its continuity with the city and tradition, the project of the China Design Museum raises the question: How does Siza work in the Chinese city? Siza and Castanheira's building is at the same time part of a large campus planned by the well-known local architects Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu/Amateur Architecture, whose experimental approach to drawing and craft skills suggests yet another set of comparisons. To sum up, Siza and Castanheira avoid easy solutions: the siting and massing, scale, spatial organization and material expression of the China Design Museum provide a measure between realities – open/closed, traditional/contemporary, local/universal – that first appeared incommensurable.


Prior literature documents a positive association between union power, calculated using industry-level union data, and information asymmetry. Prior literature also finds a mitigating effect from employee ownership on the negative association between union power and voluntary disclosure. Using a sample of company observations for fiscal years 2008 through 2010, I examine the effect of company-specific measures of employee unionization on market-based measures of information asymmetry (proxied for by insider trading activity, analyst following, and analyst dispersion). I also examine whether employee ownership impacts the effect of company-specific measures of employee unionization on my market-based measures of information asymmetry. I find mixed results that provide ambiguous evidence about whether employee unionization affects information asymmetry and whether employee ownership affects the impact of employee unionization on information asymmetry. These results suggest that industry-level unionization measures provide differing results from company-specific unionization measures and that the impact of unions on information asymmetry is unclear. These findings should be useful in the current debate about the ultimate costs and benefits of unionization.


This paper reviews some of the characteristics of urban climates and the causes and effects of urban heat island (UHI) issues in the tropical climate. UHI effect is a kind of heat accumulation phenomenon within the urban areas due to urban construction and human activities. It is recognized as the most evident characteristic of urban climate. The increase of land surface temperature in San Juan, Puerto Rico, caused by the UHI effect was influenced by the change of land use and material types in construction. The impacts of daily temperature, surface albedo, evapotranspiration (ET), and anthropogenic heating on the near-surface climate are discussed. Analyzed data and field measurements indicate that increasing albedo and vegetation cover can be effective in reducing the surface and air temperatures near the ground. Some mitigation and prevention measures are proposed for the effects of UHI, such as a flash flood warning system.


There are many differences between the theories of Bentham and StuartMili specially in the ways in which both characterize the concept of pleasure.The concept, in turn, obviously has great influence on the utilitarian calculus. I am concemed in this paper with the issue of which of the two versions is most compatible with the liberal doctrine. In the procesa of establishing the compatibility of both versions with the liberal doctrine serious difficulties cannot be avoided, but this difficulties can  be resolved easily in Bentham's theory. This conclusion has been disputed from many quarters.  Ronald Dworkin has raised objections to Bentham's theory from the point of view of liberalism while Jonathan Riley has attempted at building a liberal utilitarianism based-precisely- on Mill's theory. I set out to demostrate that Dworkin's objection may be overcome and I introduce, with purpose in mind, the concept of voluntarily accepted extemal reasons. 1 also believe that Riley's intent is doomed to fail, because it introduces elements of perfectionism and patemalism into the theory.


This article examines the idea that residential minimum parking requirements are associated with lower housing and population densities and higher vehicle densities (residential vehicles per square mile). Cities frequently use minimum parking requirements to manage traffic, but parking requirements accommodate vehicles, suggesting they should lead to more driving and congestion rather than less. If parking requirements reduce congestion, they likely do so not by reducing the number of vehicles in an area but by reducing the densities of housing and people. We support this idea by comparing the Los Angeles and New York urbanized areas. We show that differences in housing, vehicle, and population densities across and within these urbanized areas are closely correlated with differences in the share of housing units that include parking, and that the share of housing units that include parking is in turn correlated with the stringency of parking requirements. Compared with Los Angeles, New York shifts less of the cost of driving into its housing market. We further show that within New York City, a 10% increase in minimum parking requirements is associated with a 5% increase in vehicles per square mile, a 4% increase in vehicles per person, and a 6% reduction in both population density and housing density. These relationships remain even after controlling for street layout and proximity to the subway.


Background: Hoslundia opposita Vahl. (Lamiaceae), a common local shrub in Ghana, is traditionally known not only for its pharmacological benefits but also for its insecticidal properties. Its acaricidal property, however, has not been investigated. Objective: To test the acaricidal effects of the crude extract and fractions of H. opposita leaves as well as to isolate and characterize the acaricidal principles. Materials and Methods: The crude methanolic extract, pet. ether, ethyl acetate and aqueous fractions of the leaves of H. opposita were tested against the larvae of the cattle tick, Amblyomma variegatum, using the Larval Packet Test. A bioassay-guided isolation was carried out to identify the acaricidal principle obtained from the ethyl acetate fraction. Results: The active principle was characterised as ursolic acid, a triterpene previously isolated from the leaves of the same plant. The extract and fractions were less potent than the control, malathion (LC50 1.14 × 10-4 mg/ml). Among the plant samples however the crude methanolic extract exhibited the highest effect against the larvae (LC50 5.74 × 10-2 mg/ml), followed by the ethyl acetate fraction (LC50 8.10 × 10-2 mg/ml). Ursolic acid, pet. ether and aqueous fractions however showed weak acaricidal effects with LC50 values of 1.13 mg/ml, 8.96 × 10-1 mg/ml and 1.44 mg/ml, respectively. Conclusion: Ursolic acid was not as potent as the crude methanolic extract and the ethyl acetate fraction from which it was isolated. The overall acaricidal effect of H. opposita may have been due to synergy with other principles having acaricidal properties.


During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised to "cancel" the Paris Agreement. On 1 June 2017, he announced his intention to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement. More generally, the new Trump administration has been vocal about changing US climate and environmental policies. This paper reviews these proposed changes, potential obstacles, and possible future paths. These include US membership in the Paris Agreement, the US NDC submitted to the Paris Agreement, and US domestic policies such as the EPA "Clean Power Plan" and other agency rules. So far, the Trump administration has taken some steps, but it has not made final policy changes. Its attempts at policy changes will take time, perhaps several years to withdraw from Paris and to conduct new agency rulemakings. They may be challenged by others, such as in other countries, in Congress, in the States, and in court. Litigation could seek to require agencies to justify their policy changes, to carry out statutory responsibilities, to use a social cost of carbon, and to protect the public trust. The effects of potential policy changes on the economy, emissions, and international relations remain to be seen. Beyond policy changes that may be made by the Trump administration, EPA and other agencies, another path may be through new legislative action in Congress. One avenue to seek bipartisan support for legislation in Congress might be a deal to remove EPA regulatory authority over greenhouse gases while also simultaneously adopting a new carbon tax. Climate policy is not determined by a single decision maker, but evolves in a complex web of institutions, with moves and countermoves by multiple actors


Abstract A review of the development of advanced tokamak scenarios at the Joint European Torus (JET) is presented. It has been established that the current profile plays an important role in these regimes, and the presentation of the experimental achievement has been organized with this in mind. The main achievements are discussed: from high beta plasmas starting with a fully diffused plasma current; from hybrid scenarios with a flat current profile and central q around unity; from pellet-enhanced modes where the role of reversed magnetic shear (transiently) was first established; from optimized shear configurations with weakly reversed shear allowing the establishment of internal transport barriers in D-T plasmas for the first time, including the production of 8.2 MW of fusion power; and from strongly reversed shear and steady-state scenarios. The required development of the control techniques for these advanced scenarios is also described. The results obtained have significantly contributed to the development of advanced scenarios for ITER operation. The prospects for further development of hybrid and steady-state scenarios for ITER are indicated in view of the ongoing upgrades to additional heating systems in JET.


Forty-five years ago, the A. Philip Randolph Institute issued "The Freedom Budget," in which a program for economic transformation was proposed that included a job guarantee for everyone ready and willing to work, a guaranteed income for those unable to work or those who should not be working, and a living wage to lift the working poor out of poverty. Such policies were supported by a host of scholars, civic leaders, and institutions, including the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; indeed, they provided the cornerstones for King's "Poor Peoples' Campaign" and "economic bill of rights." This paper proposes a "New Freedom Budget" for full employment based on the principles of functional finance. To counter a major obstacle to such a policy program, the paper includes a "primer" on three paradigms for understanding government budget deficits and the national debt: the deficit hawk, deficit dove, and functional finance perspectives. Finally, some of the benefits of the job guarantee are outlined, including the ways in which the program may serve as a vehicle for a variety of social policies.


In this thesis, forecasting models for the UK pigmeat sector are built using various methodologies with particular interest being paid to the relative forecasting ability of time series models compared with the performance of biological and econometric methodologies. The main determinant of the supply of pigmeat in the UK is the size of the breeding herd, the quantity of meat itself being directly attributable to the number of fat pigs slaughtered and to a lesser extent cullings of older sows and boars from the breeding herd. These three key variables are the ones modelled in this thesis. Prior to building forecasting models an explanation is given of the system underpinning the pig sector, in terms of the biology of the breeding herd pig, the mechanism of how supply responds to prices, and consideration of the well documented 'pig cycle'. Thus, the workings of the biological and economic mechanisms are described in the context of an equilibrium framework before the relevant models are built.

Having built the various models, their relative forecasting performance is measured by consideration of the size of the forecast errors and the ability of the models to forecast the directional movements of the actual series in a specified out-of-sample period. In the concluding chapter, suggestions are made as to how the models might be developed further and how the various approaches might be combined into a single forecasting model.

The availability of data has an important influence on much of the model building methodology and forecasting analysis. Consideration is given at various points in the thesis to circumventing these restrictions.


In relation to the criticism of judges it is important to ensure that the call to account does not overwhelm judicial independence. The process of accountability itself will be unworkable and therefore unacceptable. Whether criticism is purposive and how to assess criticism as purposive will depend on the facts and circumstances of each event. The Strasbourg Court's jurisprudence proves that although the judiciary enjoys a special protection, it does not function in a vacuum and questions about the administration of justice may be part of the public debate. In the Sunday Times v. United Kingdom [6] the European Human Rights Court noted, that "there is general recognition of the fact that the courts cannot operate in a vacuum. Whilst they are the forum for the settlement of disputes, this does not means that there can be no prior discussion of disputes elsewhere, be it in specialised journals, in the general press or amongst the public at large. Furthermore, whilst the mass media must not overstep the bounds imposed in the interests of the proper administration of justice, it is incumbent on them to impart information and ideas concerning maters that come before the courts just as in other areas of public interest. Not only do the media have the task of imparting such information and ideas: the public also has a right to receive them". Reticence and avoidance of courts to explain adopted decisions and certain circumstances that influenced decisions that are not present in laconic court documents to the media and the public does not protect authority of courts too. The requirements to state absolutely all influential circumstances in the decision are often not fully realized and the motives that predetermined a certain decision remain unmentioned. Therefore the conciseness and laconicism in decisions and oftentimes dilettantism of the media create conditions for doubts and distrust in the work of a court to thrive. Courts should be interested in informing the society about adopted decisions, especially in resonant cases. This would lead to avoidance of false and misleading information spread by the media. The Lithuanian law and practice on criticizing judges and the ways in which they may react to criticism differ considerably from those in the so–called common law countries. Judges do not enjoy any special protection of their private lives, criticism or defamation. The analysis revealed, that judges can not be treated as public persons, therefore they are afforded maximum protection of their reputations and private lives.


The connectivity of ecohydrological and biogeochemical processes across time and space is a critical determinant of ecosystem structure and function. However, characterizing cross‐scale connectivity is a challenge due to the lack of theories and modelling approaches that are applicable at multiple scales and due to our rudimentary understanding of the magnitude and dynamics of such connectivity. In this article, we present a conceptual framework for upscaling quantitative models of ecohydrological and biogeochemical processes using electrical circuit analogies and the Thévenin's theorem. Any process with a feasible linear electrical circuit analogy can be represented in larger scale models as a simplified Thévenin equivalent. The Thévenin equivalent behaves identically to the original circuit, so the mechanistic features of the model are maintained at larger scales. We present three case applications: water transport, carbon transport, and nitrogen transport. These examples show that Thévenin's theorem could be a useful tool for upscaling models of interconnected ecohydrological and biogeochemical systems. It is also possible to investigate how disruptions in micro‐scale connectivity can affect macro‐scale processes. The utility of the Thévenin's theorem in environmental sciences is somewhat limited, because not all processes can be represented as linear electrical circuits. However, where it is applicable, it provides an inherently scalable and quantitative framework for describing ecohydrological connectivity. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


The European Union (EU) Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) project Spectrum [12] set out to develop a freight vehicle which would facilitate the exploitation of the low density, high value (LDHV) goods market. Key to the performance criteria for the vehicle were: increased speed to enable mixed running with passenger services; improved ride quality to avoid damage to the LDHV goods; and reduced track damage for longevity and sustainability on increasingly stressed infrastructure. This paper presents aspects of the development of a novel running gear arrangement for the Spectrum vehicle, focussing on the dynamic performance of a Vampire vehicle model and the steps to realising stable running. Finally, the estimated performance of the Spectrum vehicle concept is compared against calculations for a conventional freight wagon with respect to curving, vertical track forces and potential savings in track access charges through implementation of Network Rail's Variable Track Access Charge Calculator. It was found that the novel Spectrum concept could offer savings in Variable Usage Charges of between 8% and 16% compared to the conventional equivalent.


This issue of Law Text Culture has its genesis in a research project on Mobile Peoples Under the Eye of the Law which was originally proposed by Associate Professor Cathy Coleborne at the University of Waikato. The project was supported with a grant for a one day symposium, held in December 2010, from the University of Waikato Contrestable Research Trust Fund, for which we are grateful. As guest editors we invited contributions of postcolonial analyses that investigated mobile peoples, in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific, both historically and in the present. We were especially interested in the ways in which regulation and surveillance in all of its forms — legal, policy, administrative and so forth — produced and constructed mobile peoples, and how categories of gender and sexuality were shaped in relation to mobile peoples in and through these regimes. This journal article is available in Law Text Culture: http://ro.uow.edu.au/ltc/vol15/iss1/1


The present study has been designed to investigate cost of cultivation and returns per hectare of guava fruit. A sample of thirty guava farmers was taken purposively from various villages in Rai block of Sonepat district of Haryana. On the basis of the nature of data, various statistical and economic tools were used for estimation of cost and returns of guava production. The average first year establishment costs per hectare for guava has been worked out to be ` 77527. The per hectare per year returns from guava orchards have been worked out to be ` 223308. The economic viability of the guava, mainly net present value, internal rate of return, benefit-cost ratio and payback period have been computed as ` 599313.66, 26.11 per cent, 1:3.09 and 7 years, respectively. The findings of study shows that guava growing is a step towards the diversification and commercialization of agriculture in the state and it also helps in doubling the farmers' income. Keeping in view all the facts, there is need to develop early fruit bearing varieties of guava, timely supply of necessary inputs to make guava cultivation more profitable.


This book is part of a collection of true stories from around the world which are guaranteed to capture your pupils' imaginations and develop their reading skills. Oxford Reading Tree True Stories are written by well-known authors and are full of stunning illustrations and photography. Books contain inside cover notes to support children in their reading. Help with childrens reading development also available at www.oxfordowl.co.uk. This book is also available as part of a mixed pack of 6 different books or a class pack of 36 books of the same Oxford Reading Tree level.


Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) components selection is an activity that plays an increasingly crucial role in the delivery of software systems. We are using i*, specially Strategic Dependency models, for driving this activity. Software domains are modeled as actors, and the relationships among them and with external actors (people, other software systems, organizations, etc.) are represented using the concept of dependency. While providing some satisfactory findings, our proposal has also given light to some
interesting questions that we have tackled or are still dealing with, remarkably: Which are the foundations of COTS components selection? Which are the properties of interest when selecting COTS components and how do we formalize them? How do we build
i* models in a consistent way? What is the
precise meaning of the i* constructs that we use in our models? How do we organize the knowledge about the marketplace and how do we use this knowledge during selection? What type of tool-support is appropriate? In this
chapter, we present our current state of research in the COTS components selection area and provide some partial answers to
the questions above.


The poverty and weakness of Central America, combined with its potential strategic importance in world politics, have made this region extremely vulnerable to external intellectual and political influences. The result of these influences has been national political processes guided by European notions of Conservatism, Liberalism and Socialism, and a social sciences tradition that is trapped in the intellectual ethos of its mid-nineteenth century European precursors. This article argues that the Eurocentric theoretical orientation dominating Central American social sciences ignores the fact that the relation between time and space that conditioned the evolution of Europe is qualitatively different from that which has influenced the political evolution of Central America since 1492. Different time/space relations have produced different kinds of States as well as different political actors and institutions. The main challenge faced by the Central American social sciences today is to identify these differences and to study and treat them as Central American normalities, rather than as deviations from pre-established European patterns.


Three modeling techniques, namely, a radial basis function neural network (RBFNN), a comprehensive kinetic with genetic algorithm (CKGA), and a response surface methodology (RSM), were used to study the kinetics of Fischer–Tropsch (FT) synthesis. Using a 29 × 37 (4 independent process parameters as inputs and corresponding 36 responses as outputs) matrix with total 1073 data sets for data training through RBFNN, the established model is capable of predicting hydrocarbon product distribution i.e., the paraffin formation rate (C2–C15) and the olefin to paraffin ratio (OPR) within acceptable uncertainties. With additional validation data sets (15 × 36 matrix with total 540 data sets), the uncertainties of using three different models were compared and the outcomes were: RBFNN (±5% uncertainties), RSM (±10% uncertainties), and CKGA (±30% uncertainties), respectively. A new effective strategy for kinetic study of the complex FT synthesis is proposed: RBFNN is used for data matrix generation with a limited number of experimental data sets (due to its fast converge and less computation time), CKGA is used for mechanism selections by the Langmuir–Hinshelwood–Hougen–Watson (LHHW) approach using a genetic algorithm to find out potential reaction pathways, and RSM is used for statistical analysis of the investigated data matrix (generated from RBFNN through central composite design) upon responses and subsequent singular/multiple optimizations. The proposed strategy is a very useful and practical tool in process engineering design and practice for the product distribution during FT synthesis.


The purpose of this study was to analyze whether or not schools can have an impact on student knowledge of health and fitness if they implement programs that educate students in that content area. This study gathered information, via student questionnaires, from two school sites, to compare student knowledge at a school that implemented a health and fitness program with one that did not. The review of literature focused on current and passed data that emphasized the need for educating society on health trends, resulting impacts of unhealthy lifestyles i.e. obesity rates and diabetes, and the best venue for addressing and making changes in current health trends. The resulting data confirmed the hypothesis: Student health knowledge is higher in schools that provide health/fitness programs than those that do not, to be true. The data was statistically significant revealing that site A (the intervention site) yielded an average of 83-86% knowledge in health and fitness awareness and site B an average of 40-43% knowledge in that subject area. Health and Fitness Awareness in Schools 7


This study was designed to measure the effects of job stress on organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and job performance. A total of 170 questionnaires were distributed among auditors in the audit institutions in Tehran and Mashhad. To test the hypotheses, path analysis and structural equation and regression were employed. The results showed that the job stress had a negative effect on organizational commitment and job satisfaction and there was not a negative correlation between job stress and job performance. Job stress via organizational commitment and job satisfaction affected job performance negatively. Also, job stress had a negative impact on job satisfaction via organizational commitment.


ABSTRACT Social network analysis is a new research field in data mining. The clustering in social network analysis is different from traditional clustering. It requires grouping objects into classes based on their links as well as their attributes. While traditional clustering algorithms group objects only based on objects' similarity, and it can't be applied to social network analysis. So on the basis of BSP (business system planning) clustering algorithm, a social network clustering analysis algorithm is proposed. The proposed algorithm, different from traditional clustering algorithms, can group objects in a social network into different classes based on their links and identify relation among classes. INTRODUCTION Social network analysis, which can be applied to analysis of the structure and the property of personal relationship, web page links, and the spread of messages, is a research field in sociology. Recently social network analysis has attracted increasing attention in the data mining research community. From the viewpoint of data mining, a social network is a heterogeneous and multi-relational dataset represented by graph (Han & Kamber, 2006). Research on social network analysis in the data mining community includes following areas: clustering analysis (Bhattacharya & Getoor, 2005; Kubica, Moore and Schneider, 2003), classification (Lu & Getoor, 2003), link prediction (Liben-Nowell & Kleinberg, 2003; Krebs, 2002). Other achievements include PageRank (Page, Brin, Motwani and Winograd, 1998) and Hub-Authority (Kleinberg, 1999) in web search engine. In this paper, clustering analysis of social network is studied. In the second section, a social network clustering algorithm is proposed based on BSP clustering algorithm. The algorithm can group objects in a social network into different classes based on their links, and it can also identify the relations among classes. In the third section, an example of social network clustering algorithm is presented, and then the conclusion and the future work direction are given. SOCIAL NETWORK ANALYSIS BASED ON BSP CLUSTERING There has been extensive research work on clustering in data mining. Traditional clustering algorithms (Han & Kamber, 2006) divide objects into classes based on their similarity. Objects in a class are similar to each other and are very dissimilar from objects in different classes. Social network clustering analysis, which is different from traditional clustering problem, divides objects into classes based on their links as well as their attributes. The biggest challenge of social network clustering analysis is how to divide objects into classes based on objects' links, thus we need find algorithms that can meet this challenge. The BSP (business system planning) clustering algorithm (Gao, Wu and Yu, 2002) is proposed by IBM. It designed to define information architecture for the firm in business system planning. This algorithm analyses business process and their data classes, cluster business process into sub-systems, and define the relationship of these sub-systems. Basically BSP clustering algorithm uses objects (business processes) and links among objects (data classes) to make clustering analysis. Similarly social network also includes objects and links among these objects. In view of the same pre-condition, the BSP clustering algorithm can be used in social network clustering analysis. According to graph theory, social network is a directed graph composed by objects and their relationship. Figure 1 shows a sample of social network, the circle in the figure represents an object; the line with arrow is an edge of the graph, and it represents directed link between two objects, so a social network is a directed graph. [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] In figure 1, let [O.sub.i] be an object in social network (i = 1 ... m), let [E. …


Abstract. Measuring tissue oxygenation in vivo is of interest in fundamental biological as well as medical applications. One minimally invasive approach to assess the oxygen partial pressure in tissue (pO2) is to measure the oxygen-dependent luminescence lifetime of molecular probes. The relation between tissue pO2 and the probes' luminescence lifetime is governed by the Stern-Volmer equation. Unfortunately, virtually all oxygen-sensitive probes based on this principle induce some degree of phototoxicity. For that reason, we studied the oxygen sensitivity and phototoxicity of dichlorotris(1, 10-phenanthroline)-ruthenium(II) hydrate [Ru(Phen)] using a dedicated optical fiber–based, time-resolved spectrometer in the chicken embryo chorioallantoic membrane. We demonstrated that, after intravenous injection, Ru(Phen)'s luminescence lifetime presents an easily detectable pO2 dependence at a low drug dose (1  mg/kg) and low fluence (120  mJ/cm2 at 470 nm). The phototoxic threshold was found to be at 10  J/cm2 with the same wavelength and drug dose, i.e., about two orders of magnitude larger than the fluence necessary to perform a pO2 measurement. Finally, an illustrative application of this pO2 measurement approach in a hypoxic tumor environment is presented.


The article provides an overview of current research in the use of regression models when performing assessment procedures of material misstatement risks due to fraud in the financial statement audit. The authors were reviewing regression models predicting deliberate distortion of financial statements, developed by M. Beneish and J. Jones. In addition, they consider the later modifications to these models, applicable in the course of the audit process to estimate the material misstatement risk on the basis of meso-economic, operational, scaling, and other factors affecting the operations of reporting accountants.The specific features, advantages, disadvantages and the use of different types of regression models in the audit process are described. The criteria for comparison are formulated, and the comparative analysis of adapting the best-known features of regression models to the challenges of fraud risk assessment for financial statements in the audit process is carried out. The conclusions about the possibilities of use and a range of different types of regression models when initiating the fraud risk assessment procedures to the financial statements in the audit process are formulated. The limitations, inherent of such models are explained.


We live in a reality where official documents are born, revised and disseminated online. Most post-secondary institutions have record retention schedules to facilitate the transfer of official records with lasting historical value to the archives. Implementing similar practices in the online environment is challenging, in part due to an organizational culture that does not view websites as official university records, but rather as transactional, fluid spaces, despite the fact that such spaces are increasingly the only source of important documents. In addition, economic pressures and cutbacks in the university sector makes enterprise level electronic records keeping systems out of reach for many. These challenges cannot be met with a single solution. We need to work strategically to collaborate on long-term plans to ensure that born-digital records find their way into the archives.

We will focus on our efforts within the library to capture and preserve a selection of websites and communications that document York's campus activities, in a manner that is systematic and accessible. We will report on our efforts to pilot this approach both within the university environment and in the wider community. We will reflect on our efforts to share our practice, successes and failures publicly, working within events in which we have a personal or philosophical investment. A keynote speaker at a recent archival conference admonished the profession that "once one becomes an activist, one has lost one's perspective and objectivity as a public servant." We aim to test this assertion and demonstrate that 'active' professionals can contribute to the preservation of our own institutional memory, and document the wider online social movements shaping our collective experience.


ABSTRACT We collected 43 km of high resolution seismic reflection profiles from a 14.5-hectare lake in the central Florida sinkhole district and data from three adjacent boreholes to determine the relationship between falling lake levels and the underlying karst stratigraphy. The lake is separated from karstified Paleogene to early Neogene carbonates by 65-80 m of siliciclastic sands and clays. The carbonate and clastic strata include three aquifer systems separated by clay-confining units: a surficial aquifer system (fine to medium quartz sand in the upper 20-30 m), the 25-35 m thick intermediate aquifer system (in Neogene siliciclastics), and the highly permeable upper Floridan aquifer system in Paleogene to early Neogene limestones. Hydraulic connection between these aquifer systems is indicated by superjacent karst structures throughout the section. Collapse zones of up to 1000 m in diameter and > 50 m depth extend downward from a prominent Middle Miocene unconformity into Oligocene and Upper Eocene limestones. Smaller sinkholes (30-100 m diameter, 10-25 m depth) are present in Middle to Late Neogene clays, sands, and carbonates and extend downward to or below the Middle Miocene unconformity. Filled and open shafts (30-40 m diameter; 10-25 m depth) ring the lake margin and overlie subsurface karst features. The large collapse zones are localized along a northeast-southwest line in the northern ponds and disrupt or deform Neogene to Quaternary strata and at least 50 m of the underlying Paleogene carbonate rock . The timing and vertical distribution of karst structures are used to formulate a four-stage model that emphasizes stratigraphic and hydrogeologic co-evolution. (1) Fracture-selective shallow karst features formed on Paleogene/early Neogene carbonates. (2) Widespread karstification was limited by deposition of Middle Miocene clays, but vertical karst propagation continued and was focused because of the topographic effects of antecedent karst. (3) Groundwater heads increase with the deposition of thick sequences of clastics over the semipermeable clays during Middle and Late Neogene time. The higher water table and groundwater heads allowed the accumulation of acidic, organic-rich soils and chemically aggressive waters that percolated down to Paleogene carbonates via localized karst fea ures. (4) After sufficient subsurface dissolution, the Paleogene carbonates collapsed, causing disruption and deformation of overlying strata. The seismic profiles document an episodic, vertically progressive karst that allows localized vertical leakage through the clay-confining units. The spatial and temporal karst distribution is a result of deposition of sediments with different permeabilities during high sea levels and enhanced karst dissolution during low sea levels. Recent decreases in the potentiometric elevation of the Floridan Aquifer System simulates a sea-level lowstand, suggesting that karst dissolution will increase in frequency and magnitude.


This paper addresses the questions of acceptable upper limits for storage development and how best to deploy storage capacity in the long-term planning of built surface water storage in river basins. Storage-yield curves are used to establish sustainable storage development pathways and limits for a basin under a range of environmental flow release scenarios. Optimal storage distribution at a sub-basin level, which complies with an identified storage development pathway, can also be estimated. Two new indices are introduced—Water Supply Sustainability and Environmental Flow Sustainability—to help decide which pathways and management strategies are the most appropriate for a basin. Average pathways and conservative and maximum storage limits are illustrated for two example basins. Conservative and maximum withdrawal limits from storage are in the range of 45–50% and 60–65% of the mean annual runoff. The approach can compare the current level of basin storage with an identified pathway and indicate which parts of a basin are over- or under-exploited. A global storage–yield–reliability relationship may also be developed using statistics of annual basin precipitation to facilitate water resource planning in ungauged basins.


Under the Rome Statute establishing the International Criminal Court (ICC), victims of the world's most serious crimes were given unprecedented rights to participate in proceedings before the Court. Nearly a decade later, a similar scheme was established to allow victims to participate in proceedings before the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), a court created to prosecute atrocities committed by Khmer Rouge leaders. Although there are some differences in how the schemes work at each of these tribunals, both allow victims to participate in criminal proceedings independent of their role as witnesses. Advocates of victim participation had high expectations that these new schemes would allow victims to tell their story in a way they were unable to do as victim-witnesses before the ad hoc International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslav and Rwanda, where victims' voices were often unheard or only partially heard because of the need to narrowly define what happened to them in line with the rules of evidence and the legal definition of the crimes with which the accused were charged. This paper explores whether this novel victim participation scheme, as implemented by the ICC and ECCC thus far, has actually allowed for greater recognition of victims' voices and experiences than was possible in proceedings before their predecessor tribunals. The paper begins with a brief discussion of the significance of "visibility" as a feminist goal. From there, it describes the victim participation schemes at the ICC and ECCC and how victim participants, particularly survivors of gender-based violence, have fared under these schemes. Although the ICC and ECCC have only heard a limited number of cases, the history of participation before these tribunals thus far suggests that victim participants face some of the very same limitations victim-witnesses encountered at the ad hoc tribunals, particularly in cases against senior leaders and those most responsible for serious international crimes, the focus of ICC and ECCC prosecutions today. In the final section, the paper considers the implications of this conclusion on the feminist goal of visibility and, more generally, on the larger question of whether alternatives to direct participation in proceedings might be as, if not better, suited to achieve this goal.


Genotoxicity of freshwater fish in Anambra River was studied by micronucleus (MN) assay, and the resultant micronucleus indices were used as biomarkers to estimate and predict pollution profile and possible danger of feeding on the aquatic species. The micronucleus profiles of the fish were measured from gill and kidney erythrocytes using microscopic technique. Season, breed, and location effects on micronucleus indices, together with their interactions, and the correlation between the pollutants in fish, water ecosystem, and the micronucleus profiles were also studied. Two major seasons (Rainy and Dry) and preponderant fish breeds in the river [Synodontis clarias -Linnaeus, 1758 and Tilapia nilotica -Linnaeus, 1757] were studied at five distinct locations that displayed differential environmental stresses. The study showed that the micronucleus index of fish is an excellent biomarker for measuring the level of pollution in a freshwater habitat. This is more evident with regard to zinc and copper. Season, breed and location affect micronucleus profile adversely and strong correlations exist between zinc and copper in water and fish and micronuclei profiles. Disease outbreak among rural dwellers depending on the water for domestic and other uses is imminent and they lack knowledge on its health implication. Furthermore, the study maintained that the micronucleus in fish could be measured with higher efficiency from the gill than the kidney erythrocytes and Synodontis clarias is more vulnerable to genetic damage due to high zinc and copper pollutants than Tilapia nilotica. Consequently, the study recommends environmental sensitization of the resident population and regular monitoring (micronucleus tests) of edible aquatic life such as Synodontis clarias (catfish) in order to eliminate the danger of people feeding on toxic metals, some of which are carcinogenic.


As advances have been made in semiconductor processing technology, the number of transistors on a chip has increased out of step with the number of input/output pins, which has introduced a communications 'bottle-neck' in the design of computer architectures. This is a major issue in the hardware design of parallel structures implemented in either digital or analogue VLSI, and is particularly relevant to the design of neural networks which need to be highly interconnected.

This work reviews hardware implementations of neural networks, with an emphasis on analogue implementations, and proposes a new method for overcoming connectivity constraints, by the use of Frequency Division Multiplexing (FDM) for the inter-chip communications. In this FDM scheme, multiple analogue signals are transmitted between chips on a single wire by modulating them at different frequencies.

The main theoretical work examines the number of signals which can be packed into an FDM channel, depending on the quality factors of the filters used for the demultiplexing, and a fractional overlap parameter which was defined to take into account the inevitable overlapping of filter frequency responses. It is seen that by increasing the amount of permissible overlap, it is possible to communicate a larger number of signals in a given bandwidth.

Alternatively, the quality factors of the filters can be reduced, which is advantageous for hardware implementation. Therefore, it was found necessary to determine the amount of overlap which might be permissible in a neural network implementation utilising FDM communications.

A software simulator is described, which was designed to test the effects of overlap on Multilayer Perceptron neural networks. Results are presented for networks trained with the backpropagation algorithm, and with the alternative weight perturbation algorithm. These were carried out using both floating point and quantised weights to examine the combined effects of overlap and weight quantisation. It is shown using examples of classification problems, that the neural network learning is indeed highly tolerent to overlap, such that the effect on performance (i.e. on convergence or generalisation) is negligible for fractional overlaps of up to 30%, and some tolerence is achieved for higher overlaps, before failure eventually occurs. The results of the simulations are followed up by a closer examination of the mechanism of network failure.

The last section of the thesis investigates the VLSI implementation of the FDM scheme, and proposes the use of the operational transconductance amplifier (OTA) as a building block for implementation of the FDM circuitry in analogue VLSI.

A full custom VLSI design of an OTA is presented, which was designed and fabricated through Eurochip, using HSPICE/Mentor Graphics CAD tools and the Mietec 2.4µ CMOS process. A VLSI architecture for inter-chip FDM is also proposed, using adaptive tuning of the OTA-C filters and oscillators.This forms the basis for a program of further work towards the VLSI realisation of inter-chip FDM, which is outlined in the conclusions chapter.


Peer problems are a stressor for many early adolescents, and simple cost-effective tools for managing peer stress are needed. Expressive writing (EW) may be one such tool. With a sample of middle school children aged 12-14 years (n = 119; 53% males), this research evaluates whether cognitively oriented expressive writing (CEW), which focuses more on psychological self-distancing, improves personal well-being better than traditional EW, which focuses more on emotional disclosure. CEW-compared with EW-slightly enhanced long-term social adjustment for the entire sample, and increased positive affect for those early adolescents that reported more peer problems at baseline. These findings suggest that structured writing instructions with early adolescents may be key to improvements.


In the midst of widespread fertility decline, I examine the relationship between sibling number and support network composition using multilevel regression on data from 25 countries. A fundamental structural effect of having fewer siblings is that individuals have a smaller pool of available close-kin alters with whom to construct support networks. Consequently, networks of people with fewer siblings should be composed of different sorts of relations. Results confirm that such compositional adjustment occurs in systematic ways. Compared to those with three or more siblings, adults with none to two siblings (as separate categories) are more likely to expect support from parents, extended kin, and close friends but not more likely to do so from spouses/partners and children. Single children are also more likely to include neighbors and have smaller-sized and/or impersonal networks. These findings contradict the primacy of familial ties in social support networks. Moreover, adjustment of support networks towards nonsibling ties occurs in culturally expected ways. Those with fewer siblings are generally only more likely to turn to ties for the types of support typically associated with those relations—parents for instrumental and financial support and friends for emotional support. Single children, however, also violate institutionalized expectations of social support by turning to ties for a wider range of social support. The results suggest that continuing declines in fertility could bring about both reinforcement and rearticulation of the sociocultural framing of close personal relationships. Moreover, consistent with recent research, the results show that personal networks are influenced more by individual-level than country-level factors.


The research presented here aims at providing a comprehensive framework for solving configuration problems, based on the Constraint Satisfaction paradigm. This thesis is addressing the two main issues raised by a configuration task: modeling the problem and solving it efficiently. Our approach subsumes previous approaches, incorporating both Simplification and further extension, offering increased representational power and efficiency.
Modeling. We advance the idea of local, context independent models for the types of objects in the application domain, and show how the model of an artifact can be built as a composition of local models of the constituent parts. Our modeling technique integrates two mechanisms for dealing with complexity, namely composition and abstraction. Using concepts such as locality, aggregation and inheritance, it offers support and guidance as to the appropriate content and organization of the domain knowledge, thus making knowledge specification and representation less error prone, and knowledge maintenance much easier.
There are two specific aspects which make modeling configuration problems challenging: the complexity and heterogeneity of relations that must be expressed, manipulated and maintained, and the dynamic nature of the configuration process. We address these issues by introducing Composite Constraint Satisfaction Problems, a new, nonstandard class of problems which extends the classic Constraint Satisfaction paradigm.
Efficiency. For the purpose of the work presented here, we are only interested in providing a guaranteed optimal solution to a configuration problem. To achieve this goal, our research focused on two complementary directions.
The first one led to a powerful search algorithm called Maintaining Arc Consistency Extended (MACE). By maintaining arc consistency and taking advantage of the problem structure, MACE turned out to be one of the best general purpose CSP search algorithms to date.
The second research direction aimed at reducing the search effort involved in proving the optimality of the proposed solution by making use of information which is specific to individual configuration problems. By adding redundant specialized constraints, the algorithm improves dramatically the lower bound computation. Using abstraction through focusing only on relevant features allows the algorithm to take advantage of context-dependent interchangeability between component instances and discard equivalent solutions, involving the same cost as solutions that have already been explored.


Background: Aorto-pulmonary window is a rare heart disease occurring in 0.1-0.2% of patients with congenital cardiac disease and results from an incomplete development of the conotruncal septum. In half of the cases aorto-pulmonary windows are associated with other anomalies. This condition can occur on its own or with other heart defects such as: tetralogy of fallot, pulmonary atresia, atrial septal defect, interrupted aortic arch, truncus arteriosus, patent ductus arteriosus. Fifty percent of patients usually have no other heart defects. Babies that have a hole in between the aorta and pulmonary artery have blood from the aorta that flows into the pulmonary artery, and as a result too much blood flows to the lungs. This causes high blood pressure in the lungs (a condition called pulmonary hypertension) and congestive heart failure. Symptoms can include: delayed growth, irritability, rapid heartbeat, heart failure, infections of the lungs. Case: We describe a case of aortopulmonary window incidentally found during surgery for a Type A interrupted aortic arch and repaired uneventfully. Conclusions: In our case the anomaly was not diagnosed until the thoracotomy but anatomy allowed surgeon to perform the closure of the window.


Discussions with clinical colleagues raised issues that the impact of attending Court seems to have for patients with mental health disorders. A literature search was performed using the clinical databases Psychinfo, CINAHL, Medline, Embase and HMIC. Other sources such as NHS evidence, Health Business Elite and general web searches were carried out. Due to the limited papers located the search was opened to international papers, though in English language. Search terms such as "Court appearance" and "going to Court" were used which were merged with "mentally ill persons." Different combinations of search terms were inputted, but ultimately 15 research articles were found. The available literature on this topic is scarce, with many identifying the need for further research.


This thesis examines the intersections of gay and bisexual identity with body size, or fatness. Gay and bisexual identity and fatness are marginalized social identities that seem to be incompatible (Bond, 2013). While a sense of collective identity with the gay and bisexual community has been shown to be a protective factor against internalized homonegativity in gay and bisexual men (Halpin & Allen, 2004), the degree to which this protective factor persists for fat people in an anti-fat environment like the gay and bisexual community (Wrench & Knapp, 2008) has not been explored. This intersection of identities and anti-fat culture seemed to suggest there might be a relationship between fatness and internalized homophobia. Fatness did not moderate the relationship between sense of belonging to the gay and bisexual community and internalized homonegativity, but a significant positive relationship was found between belongingness to the gay and bisexual community and body shame.


Young people in the Middle East (15-29 years old) constitute about one-third of the region's population, and growth rates for this age group are the second highest after sub-Saharan Africa. Today, the entire Middle East region is experiencing a demographic boom along with an oil boom. The concurrence of sound economic growth and a large youthful working population create the social and political impetus for fundamental institutional change which can enable the region to capitalize on these twin dividends for lasting economic development. Thus, tapping the full potential of young people is one of the most critical economic development challenges facing the Middle East in the twenty-first century.In recent years, a number of policy frameworks have emerged to address youth transitions from education to employment and to family formation. These frameworks recognize that the critical transitions experienced by youth within a relatively short timeframe in turn have lifelong impacts on them, their families, and society at large.Building on these existing frameworks, this paper focuses on the role of markets and institutions in mediating youth transitions, namely education systems, labor and housing credit markets, and social norms governing marriage and family formation. Difficult youth transitions and social exclusion are interpreted as a consequence of failures in these market and non-market institutions. Economic and social policy should be designed to improve the institutional environment and create incentives that will allow youth to better manage their transitions to adulthood.


Abstract : From 26 to 29 August 2002, the Army assembled representatives from its worldwide commands at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania to assess Army operations to date in the global war on terrorism. The participants initial impressions focused on Operation Enduring Freedom and Noble Eagle. They highlighted rapid and successful responses at home and in distant theaters from Afghanistan to the Philippines. They also revealed some shortcomings in current operations and insights for future operations.


To examine the possible influence of obstetric factors, substance use during pregnancy, and other maternal factors on the relationship between a low maternal CD4+ level and vertical transmission of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1), data were analyzed from the Mothers and Infants Cohort Study, a prospective cohort followed for up to 4 years between 1986 and 1992 in Brooklyn and the Bronx, New York. The overall transmission rate for the cohort was 25.1% (95% confidence interval (CI) = 19.0-31.3). Prenatal CD4+ lymphocyte measurements were available for 162 HIV-seropositive mothers of infants with known infection outcomes. Among mothers who smoked cigarettes after the first trimester, those whose mean prenatal CD4+ level was < 20% had more than a threefold increased risk of transmitting their infection to their infants [relative risk (RR) = 3.30; 95% CI = 1.46-7.44; p = 0.004]. Among mothers who developed premature rupture of membranes, those with a low CD4+ level had a similarly increased risk of vertical transmission (RR = 4.33; 95% CI = 1.78-10.5; p = 0.003). These relative risks were much higher than those for mothers who did not smoke after the first trimester (RR = 1.14; 95% CI = 0.48-2.70; p = 0.76) or have premature rupture of membranes (RR = 1.29; 95% CI = 0.61-2.74; p = 0.50), indicating that these factors modified the effect of CD4+ level on transmission. Among all mothers without regard to CD4+ level, those who experienced preterm premature rupture of membranes were also at greater risk of transmission (RR = 2.24; 95% CI = 1.07-4.69; p = 0.03).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


The simultaneous occurrence of jumps in several stocks can be associated with major financial news, triggers short-term predictability in stock returns, is correlated with sudden spikes of the variance risk premium, and determines a persistent increase (decrease) of stock variances and correlations when they come along with bad (good) news. These systemic events and their implications can be easily overlooked by traditional univariate jump statistics applied to stock indices. They are instead revealed in a clearly cut way by using a novel test procedure applied to individual assets, which is particularly effective on high-volume stocks.


Lee Sheppard has written recently in these pages of how the Service has assisted the estate planning objectives of plutocrats who own professional sports teams to keep their franchises in their local communities. (See Tax Notes, May 15, 1995, p. 881.) As Ms. Sheppard has explained, the Service recently approved an elaborate plan devised by the late Ewing Kauffman to keep the Royals baseball team in Kansas City. When Kauffman died in 1993, he left the team to the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation, and the Service recently blessed the estate's claimed charitable deduction by ruling that the foundation served the charitable purpose of keeping the team in Kansas City. Tech. Adv. Mem. 9518002 (Jan. 23, 1995), however, may force the Bengals football team to move out of Cincinnati by its use of the substance over form doctrine to recharacterize a transaction designed by the late Paul Brown to leave the team to his children.


Background and Purpose— There are no agreed measures of stroke care quality that enable the standardized comparison of stroke care between countries. We aimed to develop a set of measures of quality of acute stroke care involving stroke quality registers in Western Europe. Methods— A multinational working group identified 6 regional or national stroke quality registers in Europe and reviewed their data sets, performance measures, and the method by which these had been developed. Measures used in the registers were presented for discussion to a consensus group of representatives from the quality registers identified, as well as other stroke experts, and the final set of common performance measures was agreed through majority consensus. Results— Thirty final performance measures were agreed by the European consensus group, encompassing the domains of coordination of care (stroke unit–based care), diagnosis (brain imaging, vascular imaging, cardiac arrhythmia detection, and therapy assessment), preservation of neural tissue (thrombolytic therapy and door-to-needle time), prevention of complications (dysphagia screening), initiation of secondary prevention (antiplatelet, anticoagulation, lipid lowering, blood pressure lowering, carotid surgery, time from vascular imaging to carotid surgery, and smoking cessation), survival (90-day poststroke mortality), and functional outcomes (90-day modified Rankin Scale). Conclusions— On the basis of experience of quality registers in Europe, we have proposed a common set of performance measures that will facilitate the international comparison of acute stroke care quality.


Summary
Macrophysiology is the investigation of variation in physiological traits over large geographic and temporal scales and the ecological implications of this variation. It has now been undertaken, as a defined field, for a decade.
Here, we overview its conceptual foundations, methodological approaches and insights, together with challenges the field is facing currently.
Macrophysiology builds on approaches that investigate the ecological and evolutionary significance of physiological trait variation and feedbacks in these processes. One of its key strengths is its ability to provide a basis for examining interactions among the intraspecific, interspecific and assemblage levels.
Macrophysiology is distinct from and typically concerns larger spatial and temporal scales than conservation physiology, whereas it is in several respects similar to, but antecedes, functional biogeography. Contrary to some claims, macrophysiology is not concerned only with the implications for geographic ranges of physiological trait variation.
Several insights, which would not otherwise have been achieved, have arisen from the field, notably the understanding of variation in global patterns of upper and lower lethal temperature limits and organism performance, which have important implications for forecasting the impacts of climate change.
Ten major challenges are identified for the field of macroecology, including better integration of approaches and information for plants and animals. Nonetheless, the prospects for macrophysiology as a significant way to understand our world remain bright.


This project was born from an earlier study exploring the bitcoin and blockchain community in Toronto. In that research, a sentiment kept coming up in the expert interviews; someone exploring these new blockchain-based monetary technologies would articulate something along the lines of "money is valuable because we agree it is valuable", as a quickly visited precursor to discussing their perspective on some aspect of Fintech or new finance.

This study delves deeper into the idea that the value of money is sourced from a collective agreement that it is valuable. The study begins by framing that collective agreement as a narrative, or more precisely, as an "effective story", defined by Yuval Noah Harari as "a story that many people believe."
Using a hybrid model that combines Sohail Inayatullah's 4-level, U-shaped Causal Layered Analysis (litany, system, worldview, myth) and a 4-level Computer Operating system model (user, application, OS, hardware) the project explores what that effective story/collective agreement is "about" towards an understanding of the values held by, or noticeably absent from, the most readily used monetary technology in the world; debt at interest, issued by a central authority, backed by the laws of a nation.

The combination of the CLA and a Computer Operating System model allowed for the leveraging of an idea from Douglas Rushkoff that compares the current debt-based financial system to a computer operating system with these attributes:

• Running in the background impacting everything in the system.
• In serious need of an upgrade. And;
• Its widespread use is perhaps concealing the possibility of other monetary technology solutions. Debt at interest is the monetary water we're swimming in.

Connecting the worldview level in the CLA to the OS level in a computer operating system allowed, from the CLA perspective, a way to frame a worldview as a kind of technology or tool; a software or algorithm. From the computer operating system perspective, the hybrid combination allowed for a framing of software as a worldview or ideology; an effective story.
Within the study's wider provocation of "How might we get really rich?", the study then asks, how is the story of money, (the shared agreement of its value) created in its telling? Who is authoring this story? Where and how does the "telling" of the story of money take place? This framing suggests the monetized financial transaction as the base from which the story of the common currency is authored, as well as where the manifested value of that story is realized. The transaction is addressed as a tangible site to design for specific experiences, the attributes of which may, over time and exchange, correlate to the more preferable values we'd like money to hold.

In search of a framework to explore which attributes might be designed towards within the financial transaction (any transaction where two parties are using debt-based currency), the study looked at the arena of self-esteem. A literary review on the subject yielded these ideas:

• It is an internal valuation based on the relative levels of specific attributes including honesty, responsibility, integrity, trust, and others. The coherence or synergy of those attributes, as they are internally evaluated, are the self-esteem of a person.
• It is at a level of the "deepest vision of competence and worth". It is a
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truth, (perhaps concealed to the very person making the valuation), beneath any self-delusion.
• It is a human need, on the level of oxygen, and humans will attempt to fulfilll the need. The evaluation is made one way or another and if not through true sources then through false sources.
• If self-esteem is attempted to be fulfilled through false sources it creates an addictive cycle where actual self-esteem deteriorates and addiction dynamics intensify. The study looks at outside validation as one of these false sources, and money's part to play in this dynamic.

The project considers self-esteem as a kind of asset, the building and ownership of which is the bedrock upon which value can be created. In the context of design, Bruce Mau articulates a similar idea with his thoughts on the studio and refers to it as "the project where all the other projects are created."
How is this work a new way to communicate an economic system? The study brings up the question, how might the financial transaction be an engine for self- esteem? How might we consider the transaction itself as a venue to build self-esteem by increasing, by design, the propensity to experience and increase the components of the internal evaluation that is self-esteem. In this pursuit over time, the currency (or currencies) used to facilitate the financial transaction may come to hold alternative value(s).

Nathanial Branden frames the importance of self-esteem in this way: "We have reached a moment in history when self-esteem, which has always been a supremely important psychological need, has become an urgent economic need – the attribute imperative for adaptiveness to an increasingly complex, challenging, and competitive world."
The solution model frames each of the individual experiences within the myriad of financial transactions as a piece of the source material in the story of money. This framing allows for a tangible place to design towards bringing more consciousness and alternative value(s) to the abstracted concept of value that connects to the common, debt-based currency. Over time and transactions, the hope is the iterative shifting of the monetary narrative from one of scarcity and insecurity to one more "about" an esteemed flourishing, one transactional incident at a time.

The possibility of a re-written story means a revised set of values held by the common currency. The widespread monoculture of money might then be a catalyst for change, as opposed to an entrenching tool for the status quo, as it spreads revised values, authored with increased intention and attention from more decentralized sources at the transaction level.


Ecological divergence between Blackcaps and Garden Warblers appears to be incomplete. They resemble each other closely in morphology and their foraging behaviour and food (in the breeding season) are at least broadly similar. Nevertheless, they are sympatric and occur together in a wide range of habitats although Garden Warblers are proportionately commoner in lower, denser vegetation. The two species are strongly interspecifically territorial where they occur together. However, Blackcaps are more interspecifically aggressive than Garden Warblers and are clearly dominant to them in interactions. Blackcaps respond just as strongly to playback of Garden Warbler song as they do to that of Blackcap song. They sometimes intrude into Garden Warbler territories and seek- out and chase the territory holders. In contrast, with rare exceptions, any Garden Warblers which intrude into Blackcap territories are attacked and chased until they leave the area. Also, during song playback experiments, Garden Warblers approach the loudspeaker less closely in response to Blackcap song than they do to Garden Warbler song. Many Blackcaps arrive on the breeding grounds before the earliest Garden Warblers do. A removal experiment, in which such established Blackcaps were systematically removed, showed that some of them had been keeping-out potential Garden Warbler settlers, since the latter then readily established territories and bred in a large part of the Blackcap-free zone. Normally, Garden Warblers have their territories outside Blackcat>-occupied habitat, partly because they are prevented by the aggressiveness of the Blackcaps from settling elsewhere. However, observation and song playback experiments have shown that, once established, Garden Warblers do defend their territories against both conspecifics and Blackcaps. Blackcaps have recently increased dramatically in Britain and Garden Warblers have decreased simultaneously. However, although Blackcaps can limit the local breeding densities of Garden Warblers in any one year, it is not yet clear whether Blackcap numbers are a significant factor in determining the total sizes of Garden Warbler populations.


According to Rogoff, economic variables may fluctuate due to changes in economic policies. In the long run, economic policies result in increases in fluctuations in inflation rate without increasing average outp level. From the perspective of Rogoff, problems regarding inflation instability can be overcame by giving the authority of making monetary policy to an independent institution. This study analyzes "legal independency" of the CBRT according to the theoretical framework developed by Rogoff. In addition, we tested independency of the CBRT by using Cukierman index, and concluded that independency of the CBRT has increased after a new law introduced in April 2001. Our econometric tests indicated that there is a negative relationship between inflation rate and independency of the CBRT. We could not find, however, any evidence to accept or reject the hypothesis of "an independent central bank results in a stable output level."


In addition to the commonly used chemical defense mechanism against predation, ses- sile organisms such as terrestrial plants, soft corals and seaweeds are known to have a physical defense mechanism comprising structural elements made of lignin, CaCO3, silica, etc. Most sponges have siliceous spicules that play a key role as skeletal elements. To date, there has been no evidence to show that these spicules also play a role in defense against predation. It is known that low nutri- tional value of a prey may make it less susceptible to predation. The siliceous spicules found in sponges are indigestible to predators and so sponges that produce large amounts of these spicules may be less susceptible to predation due to their low nutritional value. In the present study, we tested the physical defenses of 6 Red Sea sponge species and 6 Caribbean sponge species against the gen- eralist Red Sea wrasse Thalassoma klunzingeri. Physical defense of the 6 species collected in the Red Sea was also tested using the Caribbean wrasse T. bifasciatum. The spicules of 4 out of the 6 Red Sea sponges deterred predation by T. klunzingeri. Two out of the 6 Caribbean sponges were found to deter predation by T. klunzingeri. In assays conducted in the Bahamas on the Caribbean wrasse T. bifasciatum, only 1 Red Sea sponge species, Suberites clavatus, was found to be physically defended by its spicules. A positive correlation was found between the size of the spicules and their ability to deter predation by T. klunzingeri. Only spicules larger than ~250 µm deterred predation. On the other hand, T. bifasciatum seemed to be deterred based on reduced nutritional quality resulting from high concentration of spicules in a sponge, irrespective of their size. The combination of Crella cyatophora spicules and crude chemical extract deterred predation to a greater extent than that observed for each defense mechanism separately. This finding most probably indicates an additive mechanism of defense used by this sponge species.